four past two
by verismal
Summary: In another reality, he'd have been a hero. Not here, though. Here, he chokes on his hopes, until the only thing that's left for him to do is give up. He wonders if it's wrong, that somewhere beneath all the self-hatred and resignation, he's still clinging onto that last foolish bit of hope. That, in spite of it all, he still wants to be a hero. [Previously "the jaws of futility"]
1. lungs

Midoriya Izuku is suffocating. This is a fact that cannot be denied.

Dread is being forced down his throat, forcing him to silence, choking down the hysterical sobs that beg to leave his body. Quiet, boy, quiet. Nobody can know.

Oh, he has hope, of course, but his hopes will do him nothing to get out of this.

His vision is already blurry along the edges by the time help comes. Too blurry to comprehend the brilliance that comes to his aid.

Izuku passes out. When he comes back to consciousness, he has nothing with him but the words in his burnt notebook ( _burnt by the hands that never heal_ ), the yellow backpack that lies on his stomach, and the clothes that cover his body.

By the time he regains his senses, the sun has already started to set. _Crap_ , he thinks, knowing that his mother was probably pacing around the kitchen in worry. Izuku sets off to home, trying to put out of mind the sludge that tried pushing itself into every orifice his face had to offer. Trying to put out of mind the loud "SMASH!" that resounded through the quiet neighborhood when he was sure death was going to claim him. Trying not to think of the bench that someone had so kindly rested him on.

He worries at his lip. The moment he gets home, he rushes into his mother's arms. She's confused, but she quickly responds by squeezing him tightly. Izuku doesn't need fluid to gush down his throat for him to suppress distressed noises that threaten to escape his mouth.

Midoriya Izuku is okay.

( _Midoriya Izuku is a liar._ )

* * *

He doesn't hesitate to tell his mother what had happened. Why should he? His mom is his closest confidante. ( _That doesn't mean he tells her everything. No, there is much that Izuku does not dare speak of to her._ )

Izuku cannot hide how he feels from her, no matter how hard he tries. After all, a mother always knows. His mother does, at least. It is because of this that he is wrapped tightly in a blanket, staring despondently at the television while it plays some news story or the other. A mug is clenched tightly in his hands, but he doesn't raise it to his lips. He isn't quite sure that he even remembered what is in his cup.

A familiar crop of spiky blonde hair jolts him out of his trance. Rather, the scalding hot liquid that spills onto his arm as he jumps in surprise does. The sound that leaves his body borders on a yell, and Inko quickly scuttles into the room, dabbing his arm with his blanket. "Izuku...", she starts, but his attention has already been captured by the news report.

"Civilians at Tatooine Station quickly fled the area when the situation escalated, as the Sludge Villain attempted to take a middle schooler hostage. The station was set on fire as the teenager tried using his quirk to escape. Pro heroes were fast to report to the scene, but found themselves busy trying to hold back the fires. Thankfully, the young boy, Bakugou Katsuki, managed to fight his way out with a well-placed strike to the eyes using his explosion quirk." The reporter speaks quickly, leaving the Midoriyas little time to process her words.

Izuku opens his mouth, the beginning of a word working its way out, before he hesitates. No words are spoken.

Izuku doesn't understand. Wasn't _he_ there? Didn't _he_ stop it? The villain? Why is it Kacchan? Why is it Kacchan? Why is it Kacchan on the camera? Kacchan, Kacchan, why Kacchan? It should have just been Izuku suffocating in that alley, alone and powerless. At least then, the villain couldn't have done much with his quirkless body. Instead, it's Kacchan with his powerful, powerful quirk. A hero-to-be with a future so bright should be _untouchable. So why is it him up there on that screen?_

Izuku can't help but feel as if he holds some responsibility for the situation. After all, if he just gave in to the villain and let his body be taken over, then there wouldn't be much that the villain could do. What could a villain do, possessing a body so weak? Izuku wouldn't have minded being an empty husk, if it meant the villain could do less harm. But no, instead, the villain found a better prize, and Tatooine Station was set aflame.

Izuku briefly thinks about the difference between himself and Kacchan. Kacchan, with his hands set alight, always ready to take on any challenge in the world and come out the victor. Himself, with hands constantly moving themselves in nervous gestures, head down as he cowers when faced by danger.

Izuku later looks back on his thoughts when he is in a more optimistic mood. He wonders why he only considered Kacchan a hero-to-be for a moment, and not himself too. _My future is bright too_ , he thinks, _the path will just be tougher for me!_

It turns out that his optimistic line of thought is incorrect. There is no hero-to-be within him. Not when he is quirkless.

He finds himself anxiously checking the mail, to see if he passed the application process for Yuuei. With such a low acceptance rate yet so many applicants, there's only so many students they can allow to take the entrance exams. Izuku can only be hopeful that his application was at least accepted.

The day it comes, his world shatters.

Stopped before he can even try. Izuku laughs bitterly, tightly clenching the letter in his hands. He hears sniffing in the room, and has a belated realization that it is coming from him. _Oh_ , Izuku thinks as he lifted two of his fingers up to his lashes, only for them to feel the terrible moisture on his cheeks.

Izuku is faced with the crushing realization that there was never a future for him. Never a future of a hero, at least. With the way that he always saw his future shining bright in a pretty light, though, any future that awaits him that doesn't end in him being a hero is as good as none.

 _"Dear Midoriya Izuku,_

 _We regret to inform you that we are not able to offer you admission to the Hero course of Yuuei Academy. As you probably know, we look at each application as a whole. Admissions decisions are based on a composite of information including your previous academic performance, entrance exam scores, and quirk potential._

 _Your application file was considered in detail by me and by the faculty members in your area of interest. The number of applications we received far exceeded the number of students we are able to accept, and so we had to make very difficult admissions decisions. Each application is considered in relation to other applications in the same area and only the very top applicants are admitted. Your application, considered as a whole, was not as strong as some of the others we received._

 _Although I must regretfully send you an unfavorable response to your application, I appreciate your interest in our program and I certainly wish you the best for your future work. Course applications for the general education, support, and management departments are still open, and we encourage you to apply for them._

 _Yours truly,  
_ _Nedzu  
_ _Principal of Yuuei Academy"_

And just like that, Izuku's fate is sealed by the fancy Yuuei wax stamp that closes the envelope that lies torn on his desk.

He is particularly hung up on two of the words. "Quirk potential." Izuku has a whole lot to not like about himself, but he doesn't lack confidence in his academic ability. He knows that it wasn't his academic performance that got him rejected. After all, he consistently ranks second in his classes when it comes to scores, coming only behind Kacchan. _So that is what it is_ , Izuku thinks. At the end of the day, it always comes back to him being quirkless. To his "condition".

Izuku grabs the envelope on his desk and crunches it into a tiny ball along with the letter, before throwing the ball into the trash can under his desk. He goes to sleep early that night, too early for his mother to even call him down for dinner.

If she is going to ask him what is wrong, then Izuku won't have an answer for her. He did apply to Yuuei without actually informing her of it, after all. He had gone through all the trouble of checking for mail every day before she got home from work, and hell if he is going to let all that work be for nothing. Izuku sees the looks that Inko gave him the next day, when an entire shelf on his bookshelf was cleared and packed into a box, but she says nothing. He's glad. It is better that way for him.

His hero analysis books quickly find themselves replaced by high school-level academic books that he buys from a used book store with his allowance. Izuku just got smacked with a whole lot of reality, and a fact has finally settled itself firmly inside his mind. He is going to need to work like hell if he wants anything to come of his life. Statistics on the employment rates of quirkless folks that previously went dismissed by him are suddenly at the forefront of his mind.

Izuku briefly considers the possibility of applying for the other departments at Yuuei like his rejection letter mentioned, but it only takes a moment for him to shoot down the idea in his head. He mainly wants to go to Yuuei because it is where All Might had gone, and it is the best heroics school that can be found in Japan. There really isn't a point in attending if it isn't the heroics department that he's entering. The other departments of the school are definitely underestimated, but they aren't for him. The support and management departments are for people who know what they are going to do for their entire lives. The general education department is an option, but there are other courses in the nation that are much more academically-oriented and better suited for Izuku. What's the point, anyways, if he isn't going to be a hero?

He could apply to other heroics courses after being rejected from Yuuei, but the problem is that he can't. Yuuei is one of the more progressive heroics schools, having a clause that explicitly opens the doors of the school to quirkless applicants. Though the clause is most certainly geared towards other departments of the academy, it is definitely there, and it says nothing about quirkless people being unable to enter the heroics course. The few heroics schools that allow quirkless students either closed the window for applications already or have a very low rate of students who graduate to get their pro hero license.

All that is left for him to do is study until his fingers drip with blood, and pray that it will be enough to get him into a decent high school.

The rest of Izuku's days in middle school are spent with his head down, as he jots something down into his first few books of his new "Academic Notes for the Future" series. Just like that, Izuku stops existing to his classmates. It is amazing what putting your head down and not challenging the natural order of the world can do for you. Days spent hurrying home and taking the little first aid kit out from under his bed slowly turn into days spent at a quiet place to work, until eventually, bruises stop accumulating across his arms and his legs altogether. ( _He doesn't need Kacchan telling him to dive off of a tall building, anyways. Izuku has enough of those thoughts to make up for it._ )

His hard work can't keep the crushing weight that presses down on him. A dream so long held, a hope that is so woven into his soul, all ripped out of his hands until the only thing he can do is actually accept reality. Some nights, Izuku can barely hold himself together. In fact, he usually can't manage to hold the last threads of his composure together, and takes only five minutes of looking up at the ceiling of his room for him to burst into silent sobs. Meals are more often spent staring listlessly at the food on his plate than actually eating what is there. Izuku wants to make it up to his mom for making her worry so much, but he doesn't know how.

Reality is a bitter drink, and hell if Izuku isn't choking on it. He had ignored it for far too long, and it is time for him to acknowledge the truth. He is no hero, and he never will be. He just lacks the potential. He doesn't even know why he thought he even had a chance, when the only thing he did to try to compensate for his lack of quirk was foster a rabid fanaticism for heroism and quirks. ( _He hates the idea of compensation._ ) It is in these last months of his middle school life that his future shifts from the path of the hero to the path of the citizen.

Finally, all of his hard work studying comes to fruition. Hibiya High School certainly isn't one of the best schools he could've gone to, but it is certainly exceptional in its own right. When he breaks the news to his mother, she erupts into tears, and gives him a strong hug. It is only natural for Izuku to follow her lead. The Midoriya household is filled with sounds of loud blubbering that night.

When they finally pull away from each other, Inko is the first to speak. "Oh, my Izuku, I'm so proud of you."

"I know, mom," Izuku responds sheepishly, looking down at the floor with a smile and rubbing the back of his neck.

He is no longer sure of what he wants to do with his life, but Izuku is starting to think that maybe this path is right for him. It might just be worth the pure relief that is buried deep within his mom's warm green eyes. Izuku knows the exact reason that it's there, and he tries his best to not be hurt.

The school Izuku is going to is a school known for the large amount of students who pass through it to go to university. In the past years, that number has decreased, but it still has an impressive educational program. Part of its pure academic focus is largely due to the fact that it is one of the few high schools that existed in the pre-quirk era. Quirk discrimination policies from back then persisted for far too long. By the time it caught up with the rest of the world and realized that quirks were becoming the norm, it was too late to catch up to other heroics courses, so Hibiya High School decided to stick with what it knew best. For a quirkless student like Izuku, it's perfect.

The last days of his middle school years fly by, and he can't be gladder to leave his middle school behind.

It is a relatively quiet dinner when Inko finally brings it up. "Izuku, we're moving." Izuku chokes on a piece of fish, making an indecipherable noise of confusion as his mother forges onwards. "You know, I just think it's safer for you if we moved closer to your school. Then I wouldn't be so worried about you taking the train..." She has her hand on her cheek, distractedly staring at the rice she's pushing around on her plate.

"But-," Izuku starts, before Inko silences him with the watery look in her eyes.

"Izuku, please let me do this. I can't rest easy knowing that my child is in danger every time he goes to school and leaves." It's been like this ever since the slime villain attack. His mom's already above average level of worrying over him only seemed to increase exponentially.

There are many things that Izuku wants to point out to her. The fact that he had been attacked by the slime villain when he was walking home. That she had let him walk back and forth from his middle school alone, even in the months after. After seeing her worry herself down to the bones over him, though, he stops himself. Izuku owes her at least this. So he nods, and the two of them leave the conversation at that.

Three weeks later, Izuku and Inko stand in front of the Bakugous household. "Izuku," his mom says softly, "could you ring the doorbell?" Izuku looks at her, and then at the doorbell. There is a moment of hesitation that passes, but he does as she says.

"Katsuki, get down here!" The familiar voice of Bakugou Mitsuki yells, as the door swings open. She turns towards the open door with a huff. "Hey, Inko. Izuku." She looks at the flowers in Izuku's hands and shakes her head, "Honestly, Inko, you don't have to bother with flowers. That's kind of our job. Not that I expected differently." The empty vase she gestures to behind her is a testament to Inko and Mitsuki's familiarity with one another.

Izuku thrusts the flowers into Aunt Mitsuki's hands. Every word he has for her vanishes once he gets the chance to peer over her shoulder. Kacchan's eyes skim over Izuku, before he looks to Mitsuki. "What's De-What's he doing here?" He seems oddly subdued, no longer looking at Izuku with a dangerous fire in his eyes. Mitsuki lightly smacks Kacchan on the back of the head, "What was that for?" He yells. Oh, there's the usual rage.

"Say hello. I told you the Midoriyas would be coming for dinner!" Mitsuki's own voice raises in response to his.

Kacchan clicks his tongue, as he faces Izuku's mom. His voice is softer than before, "Thought it would just be Auntie Inko." Izuku has never really understood it, nor is he complaining about it, but there is something about Inko's presence that gives Kacchan a lot more chill than one would think him capable of. He has tried to pinpoint that look in Kacchan's eyes for years, but he can never quite understand it. Respect? Wariness? _Fear?_ He really wants to know what exactly Kacchan sees when looking at Inko, but it's just one more question about Kacchan that will forever be left unanswered.

"Whatever," Mitsuki says, "Let's not leave these two outside. Come in."

The following dinner is just as awkward as Izuku expects. The last time the two families ate like this, with all members of the two households present, was elementary school for Izuku. The sound of eating utensils hitting plates fills the room, before the silence is finally broken.

"So, Inko." Mitsuki starts, "Where are you going to be moving?" Izuku happens to be glancing at Kacchan when she says these words, so he catches the exact moment that Kacchan freezes.

"Oh! Mie prefecture. It'll still be sort of close, but that way Izuku will be able to walk to his high school." Inko says happily.

"What the hell do you mean you're moving?" Kacchan bursts out. Izuku winces at the sound of the wooden chair screeching against the floor as Kacchan quickly stands up.

Izuku bites his lip, averting his gaze from the molten fury inside of Kacchan's eyes. "Y-y-yeah?"

"Yeah isn't an answer!"

Inko exchanges a look with Mitsuki, "Oh dear, did you not tell him?"

Masaru chooses then to announce his presence at the table, with a loud sigh, "We did. Although, perhaps he wasn't quite listening."

"When?" Kacchan hisses, falling back onto his seat and crossing his arms. "Whatever. Not like I care."

"Katsuki!" Kacchan's mother exclaims, "You've been friends with Izuku for years!"

Izuku should have realized from the start that there was no way that this dinner would end up well right from the get go. There is a reason the two families don't meet together like this anymore. But for Mitsuki to make a comment like this shows just how unaware the adults in the room are of it. The relationship between their sons is like a gnarled tree, tying itself into knots over and over and over again.

Maybe Inko had the chance to see how quickly the friendship disintegrated after Izuku was diagnosed as quirkless, but Mitsuki never did.

She won't ever get to see it, either. Not when Izuku's nails are digging into the fabric of his jeans, as he tries suppressing the tremors that wrack his body. Not when Kacchan sits across the table from Izuku, glowering as he carefully considers his next words. It is a secret of ten years, and neither is willing to reveal it. No words are spoken.

The dinner ends on this bitter note. After Inko insists on putting away the plates, the five people in the house find themselves standing in front of the Bakugou household. Hugs are exchanged, and tears are spilt. Despite it all, Izuku knows he's going to miss Kacchan. "Bye Kacchan!" Izuku tries to put on a cheerful voice, but the sniffs that follow his words don't really help his case. Izuku wipes away the tears accumulating in his eyes with the back of his wrist, and tries for it one more. "Bye!"

Izuku doesn't expect his childhood friends' next words to hold as much sentimentality as they do. "Can't even stop yourself from crying. See you, Deku." There is no anger in his words, just something softer that Izuku doesn't understand. Izuku doesn't point out the fact that they probably won't ever talk like this again. "Just watch. You'll see me on TV, and I'll be the number one hero."

"Of course." Izuku says with a smile. After all, with Izuku no longer there to stand in his way, what else is going to stop Kacchan on his raging warpath to the top? ( _A lot, as Izuku comes to learn._ )

* * *

 **can u tell that idk how to write the bakugous? get ready for every character to be ooc bc i haven't read the manga since. a long time ago. yea i only really remember major events and basic character traits...that doesn't stop me from writing fanfic tho lmfao i'm a stubborn bitch**

 **hey mom are u proud of me i only had one bad thing to say about myself in the a/n this time LOOK AT ME TRYING TO DEAL WITH MY SELF-ESTEEM ISSUES**


	2. information

Izuku is starting to think that Kacchan has some shit luck, because he ends up on the television. Again. Because of a villain attack. Again. This time, though, it's not just him, but rather the entirety of Yuuei's Class 1-A.

The first he hears of it is from his classmates. While Izuku hasn't actually made any efforts to know his classmates for the simple reason of not knowing how, he always has his eyes and ears open.

He's about to take out his phone after class so that he can see all of the latest news (a habit he couldn't get out of if he tried), when he overhears two boys talking about...the Universal Studios of Japan? No, no, that isn't right, Izuku thinks, inching closer towards the conversation. So maybe he's a bit of an eavesdropper. Sue him.

"Whoa, so Yuuei really got infiltrated by villains?" One of them says in awe. He has little mouse ears that twitch curiously along with his nose, mounted on top of a crop of fluffy brown hair.

"Yeah, I hear it was Class 1-A that was attacked," a boy with black hair in a ridiculous short ponytail and electric yellow eyes says. Izuku's heart drops, because he is fairly sure that Class 1-A is Kacchan's classroom.

"Awesome! Man, those guys have it way more interesting than us!"

Izuku can't stop himself from blurring out, "Are they okay?" He turns red when he realizes that his voice was loud enough to make everyone who was still in the classroom turn towards him. "The class, I mean," he says more softly. To his relief, the pressure of the stares directed at him is lifted, as people look away from him.

The one with the yellow eyes does the opposite, looking towards Izuku. Izuku can feel the considerate gaze slowly dissecting Izuku into pieces, the boy's eyes completely unmoving. If this is a staring contest, then Izuku is quick to lose, looking away after a few moments. "I'm pretty sure that two of the teachers are in critical condition and two of the students had injuries requiring proper medical care. Probably could find more information if I wanted to." Izuku isn't sure if it's bad that he hopes that neither of those two students are Kacchan. To him, it's like wishing that another student was harmed instead, in some roundabout way.

The mouse boy shudders next to Yellow-Eyes, "It's weird how you do that. All of the news reports only said that they were attacked."

Yellow-Eyes laughs nervously, rubbing the back of his neck, "I have my sources."

"Yeah, yeah," the mouse boy gets up and slings his backpack onto his shoulders, "That's what you always say."

"Aww, you're just leaving like that?" Yellow-Eyes whines, "I didn't get to tell you about the Kiyashi Ward hostage situation! Bye, I guess."

"I check the news too, you know? Bye, Kanai. And uh, Midoriya? I hope that's your name..." Mouse's last words are mutters that Izuku doesn't think he's suppose to hear, but he can't really blame the other for not knowing his name. He belatedly realizes that the boy left before he got the chance to say goodbye.

Kanai scoffs, "Idiot. He can hear you," speaking more to himself than anyone else. He turns to look at Izuku again, "So, why are you so worried about the USJ stuff?"

Izuku startles, pointing at himself a bit confused, "Me? I'm not worried," Izuku bites his lip, hoping that Kanai won't care enough to ask more about it, because Izuku is in fact very worried.

"Yeah, you. And I don't need to look through your eyes to know that you're nervous," Kanai says, tapping his head with his finger as if that's supposed to mean something to Izuku. "So spill."

Izuku stutters as he speaks, "W-well. My fr-someone I know is kind of in that class?"

Kanai whistles, "Damn, boy. Huh, tell you what. Take my phone number, I'll let you know how they're doing if I can find any information, yeah?" He holds out his hand. "Phone?"

"O-oh," Izuku's hands fumble as he places the phone in Kanai's hands, nearly dropping it. Kanai's focus is quickly taken by the phone, and Izuku almost peers over to watch the movement of Kanai's hands before he averts his eyes.

"You can look at me, you know?" Kanai says, not looking up from the phone. "It's like you're allergic to looking at people. I don't mind."

"What?" Izuku mutters, confused.

Kanai grabs Izuku's hands, which are nervously fluttering in a back-and-forth motion, and opens them up to place Izuku's phone in them. "Text me their name. I don't have your number so you'll have to text me first."

"Yeah..." Izuku starts, but is quickly cut off by his phone vibrating in his hands. He quickly types a response to the text that shows up.

 **Mom : Izuku, I'm in front of your school**  
 **You: are u picking me up from school?**  
 **Mom : Yes, I'll explain on the way home**  
 **You: k!**

Izuku's eyes flicker over to Kanai, hesitant, but Kanai only waves him off. "Don't let me keep you. Don't worry, I won't feel lonely."

After giving Kanai a small nod, Izuku quickly packs up his things and hurries to meet his mom.

When Izuku sees her, he is a bit surprised to see her eyes completely filled with tears, and her skin a splotchy red. "Izuku," she sniffs, "Have you-"

Izuku cuts her off with words he can't stop from spilling out, "Is Kacchan okay?"

Inko's breath hitches, "I...I don't know, but Izuku, that's not...Your dad got into a car accident."

For a moment, Izuku wonders what this information has to do with him. Next, he feels terrible, because he feels nothing towards a man that means so much to his mom, enough to put her in this distraught state that he's only seen her in a handful of other times.

Izuku has never known what he was supposed to feel when it came to his dad. He isn't like his mom. All he has of his dad is the vague memory of being spun around in the air by a man with wild black hair and tired, tired eyes, and glimpses of photos of the same man looking into his mother's eyes with so much love. That's at least one emotion that Izuku holds towards him. Gratefulness. He's grateful for that carefree smile Inko gets on her face whenever he catches her looking at old photo albums. He doesn't really know what kind of person his dad is, but he likes to think that his father is a good guy if just the thought of him is enough to make Inko's worries disappear for a while.

But in all honesty, Izuku stopped registering his father as an actual person with any sort of connection to himself years ago. He's always been apathetic to the concept of the father. Izuku knows that he naturally has to have a male progenitor, that the sea of freckles on his face and his long lashes couldn't have come from his mom, but it's never quite clicked in his mind.

So right now, Izuku is struggling to connect a man of fable with a man who apparently got into a car accident. God, Izuku doesn't even know what the guy does for a living, let alone what he's been doing for all these years, because his mom always skirted around the subject. Yeah, all he's really feeling is confusion. And he feels terrible for it.

He puts on a front for his mom, though, because right now she needs comfort. "Is he okay?"

Inko nods, "He's in the hospital, but there's so much...There's so many things to sort out, I don't..." She runs her hands through her hair, and her appearance quickly goes from teary to very stressed. Perhaps both at the same time?

Izuku puts his hands on her shoulders and starts steering her in the direction of a bench. When they reach one, Izuku quickly seats her and sits down. It always scares Izuku when his mom is like this, because her anxiety just gives him anxiety which gives her anxiety which gives him anxiety which-. Izuku cuts off his thought process, before he does exactly what he was thinking about by stressing himself out. Great. But he has to pull himself together. He has to pull himself together, for his mom, so he does.

"What things?"

Inko turns the light touch that he used to guide her to the bench into a tight grasp of his hand, as she starts. "He's going to be okay, but he's in a hospital in America, and..."

Izuku stops her, "America?"

"He...He works abroad. I think he had some conference in America, but his insurance plan, there's some sort of problem with it. It's insurance mainly intended for Japan, but we thought that there was some level of national insurance, and now they need me to work through the insurance claims and pay any fees. He's not conscious enough to do it on his own, but..." Inko looks up at Izuku with dull green eyes, still clenching his hands with a death grip, "I need to go there to do it, they won't let me do it from here."

"I'll go," Izuku says hurriedly, "I'll go with you."

Inko shakes her head sadly, "You stay here. There'll be nothing for you to do here, and you can't miss the first few months of high school or you'll miss your chance to make friends."

"Months?" Izuku yelps, perhaps a little too loudly if the gazes of strangers following the sound are anything to go by.

Inko's hands slowly pull away from Izuku's, and they drop suddenly into his lap. She loosely clenches one of her hands into a fist in front of her chest and looks down at the ground, in that same way that she always does whenever there's some sort of news that she doesn't want to tell him about. With Izuku's overly observant mind and his lack of people to really get to know, he's more or less memorized all of her tells. This one is the one that hurts the most, because he remembers her doing the same thing on the night that he learned he was quirkless ( _the memory still stands out starkly in his mind, as many years ago as it may have been_ ). "I want to stay with him while he's recovering, Izuku, it's been so long." She says softly. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Izuku."

"It's fine, mom." Izuku says in a slightly wobbly voice.

Both of them know that it's really not fine. But what can they do, when the two of them are too scared to do more than just leaving it at that?

* * *

The house is far too quiet. Izuku doesn't know what he's supposed to do with the empty space in the house. His mom has been gone for a week already. After they got home from school that day, the apartment was filled with the frantic sounds of impromptu packing, as Izuku and Inko tried to gather as many clothes and daily necessities as she'd need for the trip. Now, it's just deadly silent.

It's not that he's incapable of taking care of himself. He's far from it, in fact. His mom always raised him to be able to take care of himself. He can make his own food, he can do his own laundry, and he's not the type of kid to take advantage of his mom's absence by not going to school.

But he misses the feeling of his mom tugging through his curls with a brush in the morning, because they're too wild for him to deal with on his own. ( _In reality, it's because he craves those few minutes in the morning with her, craves the feeling of her fingers in his scalp._ ) He misses hollering a quick goodbye to her in the morning, something he's already accidentally done four times by now. He misses seeing her curled up on the couch, tearing up over a romantic comedy book that she picked up from the bookstore. He misses her pressing a kiss into his forehead as thanks for him getting the groceries. He misses the taste of her cooking after a long day. He misses the way they'd giggle over a funny story she brought home from work. He misses his mom.

They say that you only realize the value of a person's presence in your life when they're gone, and right now, Izuku has never understood that saying more. His mom's presence is so strong in his life. She's one of the few people that Izuku actually interacts with on a regular basis, and he is...lonely. There's no other word for it. He is lonely, plain and simple.

They FaceTime every moment they can of course, but it's something they can only manage before Izuku goes to school. By the time he gets home from school, it's already midnight for her in America, and he'd hate to take away from the time she gets to sleep.

Izuku was initially planning on ignoring the contact that Kanai entered into his phone, because he still is not quite sure how to start the conversation. Now, though, he's bored (lonely, desperate, distressed) enough to ignore his anxiety over the matter. "YOLO XD", as the ancient greek scholars once said.

 **You: sorry! i was busy and kind of forgot to message you ;u;**  
 **Kanai Ayumu: who are u?**  
 **You: oh**  
 **You: sorry it's midoriya from school**  
 **You: midoriya izuku?**  
 **Kanai Ayumu: ohhh yea dont worry ik who u are lmfao**  
 **Kanai Ayumu: well i didnt know who u were but u told me and i know ur name that would be stupid if i didnt**  
 **Kanai Ayumu: uh. yeah so whos the person**  
 **Kanai Ayumu: unless youve got some other burning inquiries for me or just wanna chat**  
 **You: his name is bakugou katsuki, is he okay?**  
 **You: i tried checking the news but it said nothing and i don't have any of his family's phone numbers**  
 **Kanai Ayumu: k just gimme a hot minute**

Izuku nervously sits in his bed, waiting for his phone to vibrate. Apparently "a hot minute" was a grand total of three minutes, which is honestly shorter than Izuku expected it to take.

 **Kanai Ayumu: alright ur boy is good**  
 **Kanai Ayumu: only asui tsuyu and shiozaki ibara were harmed apparently**  
 **You: how do you know?**  
 **You: not to doubt you or anything!**  
 **You: i'm just curious it's not on the news or anything**  
 **Kanai Ayumu: i have...sources? :D**  
 **Kanai Ayumu: actually fuck it u seem like a nice guy i usually dont say but tbh**  
 **Kanai Ayumu: ur into the same shit i am**  
 **You: ?**  
 **Kanai Ayumu: its probably up ur alley so look up the guard's archives**  
 **You: ?**  
 **Kanai Ayumu: shh just accept it**

Bewildered. That's the only word to describe the emotion he feels every time he interacts with Kanai. He sends a few more messages to Kanai, only to get no response. In all honesty, he's starting to agree with that mouse guy (he briefly apologizes to mouse guy for referring to him as "mouse guy" in his head). The dude knows way more than he should.

At the very least, Izuku is relieved to hear that Kacchan is apparently fine, if Kanai's words are anything to go by. He's a bit curious about) and the slightest bit scared of) Kanai's source, though, and the credibility of it, so he does exactly what he was told to do. He pulls out his laptop, and runs a search on the phrase "the guard's archives".

It turns out that the Guard's Archives is an online forum, the kind that Izuku is very familiar with. In his many years as a hero fanboy, he has become very acquainted with hero forums. The people that he finds on them are very good conversational partners, and hero forums are one of the few places that he can find other people with a similar fanatic obsession with heroes (that are willing to talk to him, that is). He hasn't quite been visiting them at all lately, as he's kind of...lost a majority of his passion, but he sometimes checks up on a forum to see how some of his online forum pals are doing.

Within ten minutes of browsing this website, though, he becomes fairly sure that he's never visited it before, because he would have remembered it if he had. It's too different from what he is used to.

For starters, he quickly finds that there are roughly 2,000 people registered, which is a lot less than the typical forum. There's an entire subforum dedicated to footage of fights, and another that's dedicated specifically to discussing the weaknesses of heroes. Both features are typically banned from hero forums. Having an spot for footage is thought to encourage people to "hero-chase", supposedly causing people to put themselves in harm's way to obtain the footage. It still happens regardless, if the Izuku of eleven months ago was anything to go by, and Izuku has always thought it was stupid to think that not having a footage forum would stop people. He can't say there is any fault in the logic of banning discussing hero's weaknesses in public forums. There are obvious reasons to prohibit such discussion.

That's not where the differences end, though. Most forums have a hero leaderboard widget, but the leaderboard widget for this one has a scary amount of sorting options based on information that Izuku isn't sure is public. There is the official ranking, of course, but there is also ranking by income, total villains arrested, media coverage and...property damage?

Izuku isn't sure that the way they obtain the information is entirely legal. He isn't even entirely sure that this forum is necessarily filled with hero fans either, if the structure of the website is anything to go by.

Despite that, he finds his mouse hovering over the "Create Account" button. And god if he knows why he does it, but he gives himself the username of "Deku" of all things. Goddamnit. He didn't really feel like going with his usual All Might-themed username, but he didn't know where Deku came from.

He's now Deku on the forums, though, so he'll just have to deal with the consequences of his brief lapse in judgement. How sad is it that he's come to actually identify with the name that's been tormenting him for years.

At least it wasn't like Izuku was going to spend actual time on the forums.

With a sigh, Izuku shuts his laptop and places it on his desk. He can explore the forums more later, but right now he's just going take a small nap. He closes the blinds to block out the rays of sunshine that pour into his room.

He wakes up in the morning, stomach grumbling from a missed dinner. So much for a small nap.

* * *

 **things that weren't supposed to happen:**

 **1\. hisashi I'M SORRY but like u practically beg to be plot fodder cuz like. u don't rly do anything in bnha? askdjasasdlk inko was supposed to just pick izuku up from school bc of the usj shit but then i went "y'know what would suck"**

 **2\. ocs. actually, i was gonna try to avoid this but then a single sentence of description erupted into a full-blown oc. sorry for anyone who doesn't like ocs, i myself think that they tend to pull away from a lot of the fanfics i've seen whenever there's too much focus placed on them. it should be just kanai, but lmk if it gets to be too much! i'm at least gonna try to keep his presence limited to plot-essential stuff (unless u wanna see more of him, which. doubtful.)**

 **also this is an early update, just so this story can catch up to how much i have posted on ao3. from here on out, i'm gonna try for updates on tuesdays.**


	3. shuffle

Tired is a simple but vague word. There are a billion different kinds of tired, but the kind of tired that Izuku is feeling is an ache that strikes him deep down to his bones. There is no reason that he is tired. He simply is.

If it shows when he's Facetiming his mom, though, then...Well, he really has nothing to say to her.

Izuku loves his mother. She is the one person in his life who has been consistently there for him. Kacchan went from his best friend to his worst tormentor in the span of a week, after learning he didn't have a quirk. His dad went off to god knows where to work abroad, with nary a word to his family back home. Even All Might, who has always been there for him in spirit, has never actually...been there. ( _He thinks back to the "Smash!" he heard as he suffocated alone in that dark underpass, but he quickly dismisses the thought._ )

As much as he loves her, though, he's never been quite honest with her. He sees that look in her eyes, those worried eyes that have weighed down on his conscience for years, but he's been omitting truths from her for too long to break the habit.

Izuku still remembers the first time he lied to her, as many years ago as it may have been.

* * *

The delighted shrieks of little children fill the air, as they enjoy their break time. Izuku sits alone at a table at the edges of the outdoor play area, unaware of his surroundings, when he gets interrupted. "Oi, Deku," Kacchan sneers at Izuku, who is drawing a stick figure of a hero who recently debuted.

"Backdraft...waterhose quirk...looks like a fireman...rescue hero..." Izuku mutters to himself, the words pouring out too quickly for his little mouth to say them properly. It would be adorable, if it weren't for the way that his words were interrupted with sniffs, and his scribbled drawing interrupted by little grubby hands reaching up to dry away tears in his eyes.

One week earlier, Izuku learned that he doesn't have a quirk. The next morning, he confided in his childhood friend, hoping for Kacchan to stand with him. Instead, Kacchan revealed the fact to the whole class just seconds later, uncaring to how that one piece of information would quickly change Izuku's place in the world's pecking order. He learns that sometimes, telling the truth puts you worse off than you were before. The burden of a secret can weigh less than the consequences of revealing it.

Now, Kacchan only fumes at the way Izuku drowns out the world, by filling the silence that surrounds him with muttered words. "I'm talking to you!" Kacchan growls with ferocity that no preschooler should possess, slamming his fist down next to Izuku's notebook.

Izuku jumps, "K-Kacchan! Do you want to play with me?" His eyes are wide, looking up at Kacchan with so much hope.

He is dismissed with a snort. "Stupid Deku, like I'd want to hang out with a quirkless wimp like you."

"O-oh..." Izuku's voice is small, as he looks down to his shoes.

Kacchan's eyes light up in interest, the original purpose of the confrontation forgotten in his mind. "Hey Deku, we're friends, right?" Izuku nods quickly, kicking his legs in excitement, "Well, if we're friends, then you wouldn't mind if I borrowed those shoes, would you?"

Izuku stops. "But...They're limited edition All Might light up sneakers that my mom just got me..."

"So? Don't you think it's better for someone with a powerful quirk like me to have it?" Kacchan opens his palms in demonstration, little sparks lighting them up, "Besides, it's only borrowing. Because we're friends? Not like you have any others."

Izuku bites his lips. Kacchan wasn't wrong...

When his mom asks him why he came back home barefoot, with his socks soaked and his outfit dirty and singed, he tells her the first excuse that comes to mind. That he took his shoes off to play in the creek with the others, but couldn't find them afterwards.

Inko takes his word for it, and buys him a pair of red sneakers that are a tad too big for his little feet. It is the first of many red sneakers that he goes through throughout the years.

Kacchan never asks for his shoes again, with Auntie Mitsuki's curious questions. Instead, they become too small, burn, drown in the river, go missing during school, get written on in bold, black sharpie and return filled with garbage. It's okay, though, because Izuku quickly learns how to reassure his mother with his dazzling smile.

And if Kacchan never returns those limited edition shoes? Well, Izuku has nothing to say about it. He supposes that the closer the friends are, the bigger their secrets.

* * *

Izuku finds himself lying less and less to his mother now that Kacchan is no longer in the picture ( _no longer a problem, he briefly thinks_ ). With every passing day at his new high school, he comes to realize that he no longer has to hide bruised arms from her, or create elaborate explanations for why he's working alone on school projects. It would be a lot easier for him to do, of course, now that she only ever sees him when they're Facetiming, but he doesn't have to.

Instead, he's able to tell his mother of everything that happened at school without lying or leaving out something. The best part is that he's able to tell her that he might have formed an awkward friendship with Kanai. The wide smile that that news brings to her face almost makes him want to actually try to make more friends. ( _He doesn't, though. He's too scared that doing so will mess up what he already has._ )

Now, though, his problem is that he can't explain... _it_.

It is a variety of things. It is the way that Izuku gives his dinner a blank stare, nudging it around but never finding the appetite to eat it all. It is the way that he spends every free minute he has in school to do his homework and study, so that he can take a really long nap the moment he gets home. It is the daily naps that fail to make up for all of the hours he stares up at the ceiling of his room, unable to sleep.

He isn't stupid. He knows that this isn't healthy. But somehow, being honest to his mother about it seems worse than just dealing with it. After all, if he still managing in school despite it all, then is it really a problem? It's not like he's ruining his future by being a lazy lump in a bed.

Izuku will take this odd state of feeling like he's floating somewhere between reality and the astral plane any day, though, if it means not telling her. He knows his mom loves him, but he's scared that she'll blame herself for it. ( _Izuku thinks back to those words all those years ago. "I'm sorry." But oh, it was never her fault, it was always his. He doesn't want her to feel sorry for even a second more, not when it is him who should be sorry._ )

Izuku feels bad for not being truthful to her. He feels bad for a lot of things, actually. For not trying harder to get a good career that will help to support her in her later years. For being quirkless. For the way he forced her to take late-night work shifts in order to pay for the cost of replacing his clothes and school supplies. For taking advantage of the fact that, right now, she's too far away to see the sorry state that he's in, as she is buried under paperwork that her unconscious husband can't do.

He is so used to only having his mom to show genuine concern towards him, that when it's his new neighbors that step in because of her absence, he's absolutely floored. His neighbors, of all people.

Izuku is a very light sleeper. When the doorbell rings through the empty apartment, he jolts awake. Softly, and with emotion, he whispers, "Fuck." He's not really ready to deal with whoever's at the door, but his mom did say that she's expecting a package at the apartment that requires a signature.

He wipes the drool off of his face, and briefly tugs at his hair in an effort to make himself presentable. After ten solid tugs, he decides to just throw in the towel altogether, abandoning all thoughts of his appearance as he walks to the door.

To his dismay, there is not a person with a package waiting outside for him. It's the couple that he's occasionally seen in the hallways of his apartment building. He's occasionally given them a nod of greeting to be polite, but he's never actually properly talked to them.

Of all the times for him to decide to wear his mom's old crop top and a pair of fuzzy pajamas with chibi All Mights printed all over them. He wraps his hands around the mottled skin of his arms a little self-consciously, and gives them a small smile. "Hello."

"Oh, sorry, is this a bad time?" The man asks, "We can come back another time, if you'd like." The man just. Looks like a dad, there's really no other way for Izuku to describe it. He has that neat Dad™ hairstyle, short dirty blonde hair parted to the right. He's even wearing the khakis and a blue polo shirt that's tucked in. He has broad shoulders and a thick neck, and Izuku briefly wonders if he works in the labor industry.

It is a bad time, but hell if his mother taught him to turn away a person who needed something from him. "No, it's fine. What did you need?"

The woman speaks up this time, "We've been meaning to introduce ourselves for this entire time, but everything's been so hectic for us at work...I'm Fumiko, and this is my husband, Daichi. We wanted to invite you and your mother over to our apartment to have dinner. We live in the apartment right next to yours." Izuku is really grateful she doesn't look like a Mom™ in the same way that Daichi looks like a Dad™. She looks very youthful, with a long brown bob that curls around her neck, and rosy red cheeks.

It is only now that Izuku realizes that the couple doesn't just live in the same apartment building as him—they live next door.

"My mom is actually away on a trip for the next few months. It's just me, right now." His words cause the other two to exchange a look with each other.

"Well, we can't just let a kid like you eat on your own." Daichi says. The dinner proposition that follows might be the kind of thing that a serial killer says to their victim, but Izuku figures they look nice enough. He gives himself a pat on the back for his A+ self-preservation skills. Honestly, he's just too tired to care and figures he has nothing to lose.

Either they are as innocent as they seem, or they're a criminal duo that likes playing the long con, because the dinner that follows is actually...Nice. The two of them manage to incorporate Izuku in their conversation despite his nervous tendencies and his lapses in thought, and the food is damn good. Still doesn't hold a torch to his mom's, of course.

This is how Izuku meets the Urarakas, and this is how he comes to regularly eat meals with them. And the Urarakas simply will not allow him to mope in bed all day, when the concern they show for Izuku could only ever be rivaled by Inko.

It's not like the kind of concern that he's used to. That fake concern, that's really just thinly-veiled pity followed by people's needs to feel good about themselves. Izuku was far too acquainted with the latter, and it's only now that he's moved to a place where his general backstory isn't common knowledge that he's become aware of the fragile way that the adults in his life would handle him.

Teachers who would offer to let him eat in the staff room so that he could avoid the scathing judgements of his peers, but would never do much more. Shop owners who would slip him a free pork bun, but would ignore the way he stumbled to their counter with tears in his eyes and a first aid kit in his hands. Parents of classmates who would give him a smile as he sat alone in the playground, but would say nothing when their kids invited everyone in the class but him to their birthday parties. What they always saw was Midoriya Izuku, that poor quirkless boy with a father who is barely in the picture, and a mother who works day and night to provide for him. What they didn't see was Midoriya Izuku, the boy who looks up at heroes with stars in his eyes, and could probably dissect your quirk in ten seconds flat if you gave him the opportunity to. The adults Izuku has met in his life haven't given him much of a reason to trust adults.

The Urarakas are different. It's only three days of eating dinner with them before they insist that he take their phone numbers, in the case of an emergency at school. It's five days before they pull out a photo album, and tell him all about their daughter, Ochako, who he'd really like to meet. In one week's time, he and Daichi start going on runs around the city together, and Daichi shows him all of the buildings that he and his wife have worked on. After one and a half weeks before he's given an apartment key, so that he can come into their apartment without having to knock. It's not a solution to his daze, but they give him a few hours in the day where the world sharpens into a crystal clarity.

He supposes that a large reason that the two of them are so insistent in not leaving him be is their own daughter. Daichi and Fumiko have yet to tell him where she's going to school, but it's far enough that it's more convenient for her to live in an apartment on her own, not unalike to what Izuku is currently doing.

When the topic of one of their dinners shifts to the upcoming Yuuei Sports Festival, there's little that Izuku can do to stop the excited words that pour out of his mouth. "Yuuei is having the Sports Festival a week later than they usually do, it's probably in response to the USJ attack. I'm really excited to see all of the students from Class 1-A, I'm curious to see if real life experience with villains has any effect on their performance. I could probably compare them to other years. Oh, and then there's Kacchan to look out for, I wonder how he'll do. Knowing him, he won't accept a loss..." Izuku mutters. Fumiko laughs at the pose he's assumed, with his chopsticks hovering in the air, a bite of rice still held between them. Neither Daichi nor Fumiko interrupt his rambling words, though. It's a delightful change of pace for Izuku, though he still frequently gets embarrassed about it, despite their insistence that it's fine.

"Well, there's our own daughter to look out for, too," Daichi comments off-handedly.

Izuku chokes on air, coughing for a bit to clear his lungs before he almost yells, "Your daughter is going to be in the Sports Festival?!"

Daichi speaks with a confused voice, "Did we not tell you? She's in the General Education department, Class 1-C."

Izuku honest to god _squeals_ , "Oh my god, it's going to be even better than I expected! Wait, wait, what's her quirk? No, no don't tell me, I want to figure it out myself when I watch it."

Fumiko claps her hands together, "You can watch with us, if you don't have any plans to watch with any of your friends! The Sports Festival is the kind of thing you watch together with others. We can cheer for Ochako together."

Izuku smiles, "Count me in." He was...kind of dreading having to watch the Yuuei Sports Festival all on his own. Honestly, he was half-prepared to just set the shows for three years on record, so that he could watch it on his own time. Now he actually has a reason to watch it live like he does every year, though.

Daichi winks, "And don't think that our Uraraka won't shine out all the others just because she isn't in the heroics course. I know my girl, and if the Sports Festival is giving her the chance to join the heroics course like she told us about, then she's going to fight like hell for it, right, Fumiko?" He turns to look at Fumiko.

With a fist clenched in front of her and a determined, almost scary look on her face, Fumiko nods, "She'll be up there on the podium, just you wait." Izuku thinks that she just might just make it, if Ochako possesses even a fraction of the fiery spirit that Fumiko is showing.

* * *

The Yuuei Sports Festival is only in four days, and Izuku is an idiot who let the date catch up to him. He might not be out there participating like he used to picture himself doing, but that doesn't mean there aren't a ton of things he has to do.

Two weeks ago, Izuku wouldn't have been so geared up for the Sports Festival. Two weeks ago, he was a mopey piece of shit. He is still a mopey piece of shit, but a certain...thing has relit the passion he had for heroes within him. If anything, the fire is going twice as powerful as it did before.

When Izuku got rejected from Yuuei, he kind of pushed his hobby of quirk analysis and hero-chasing down the gutter, his reasoning being that there was no point to him doing it if he wasn't going to be a hero. His hero analysis notebooks got shoved into a box, and stayed there even when he moved. Sure, all of the new quirks he saw on the first day of high school activated a reflex that was impossible for him to get rid of, making his fingers twitch for a notebook that just wasn't there, but he suppressed the urge.

Now, though, he's back in full swing.

He told himself he wouldn't be going back to The Guard's Archives, but it took him only four days after Kanai told him about it before he gave into the urge and found himself poring through pages and pages of old discussions on the website.

The website is filled with people who are extremely informed, and every time that Izuku goes on it, he feels outclassed. Analysis skills that people praised him for on other forums are nothing special on the Archives. It doesn't discourage him. If anything, he loves it. The people there maybe aren't as obsessed with heroes as he is, but every interaction with them is an intellectual exercise. If it was just discussion about heroes, then Izuku wouldn't be learning as much as he is, but the kinds of things people talk about there tackle hero society as a whole. The struggle for police and military to maintain their position in modern society, the deceleration of scientific research as a result of quirks, the decline of skilled labor in Japan, the diminishing influence of Japan's universities, and so much more. Izuku is soaking in all of it like a sponge. He's only been on the website for two goddamn weeks, and he's already learned so much.

Right now, his problem is that, in the five months since he got rejected from Yuuei, he's let his analysis skills stagnate. On top of that, he has an entire set of notebooks that he wants to move to his laptop. He got the idea from one of the members of the Archives. The explosive fate of his thirteenth notebook convinces him that it's safest to put his notes somewhere they can be backed up. He was going to flex his old quirk analysis muscles by trying to type up all of the notes before the Sports Festival, but...

Four days is not long enough to think of an organization system that's supposed to last him. Not to mention, he has no clue what some of these notebooks say. The first five are barely legible, and he briefly curses his younger self for writing all thin and slanty instead of big and readable like most kids do. Did the little asshole think that he was cooler for writing that way? _Stick to backwards As, kid!_ Izuku thinks.

He takes the thirteenth notebook out of the cardboard box that holds all of his notes, wincing. Kacchan could have done a lot worse to it, but the singed pages of the notebook aren't the main problem for him. Izuku probably forgot that this one got tossed into a pond too, because the water damage has made the pages all wavy. He opens up the book, flipping through the pages. Yeah, he could barely read these. The graphite on the pages was all smudged or faded. As he gets closer to the end of the notebook, he prepares to toss the notebook to the side so that he can salvage what he can later, but big blocky letters make him pause. That's not supposed to be there. He finds the page where he saw the giant writing, and his breath hitches. Izuku drops the notebook, but it stays opened to the same page.

"All Might!" The words glare at him almost like a taunt, in thick strokes that seem to be from the whiteboard markers he usually keeps in his backpack. Two simple words, but they take up two entire pages. There's a little drawing of eyes with the signature All Might tufts of hair above them in the corner. It was clearly written after it got tossed out the window by Kacchan, because the writing kind of bends with the wave of the pages. Izuku doesn't need to see that to know exactly when it was written, though.

 _sludge down my throat_

 _dark, dark, dark_

 _suffocating_

 _can't breathe_

 _going to die_

 _"_ _SMASH!"_

Izuku comes back to reality dazed and confused, and a glance at the clock tells him that fifteen minutes have passed. Strange. It felt like a few seconds. It wasn't a panic attack, that's for sure. Izuku is familiar with what those feel like.

He does what he always does whenever something happens to him that's probably cause for concern. He ignores it. Puts a little dog ear on that page to remind him not to visit it again. Sets the notebook to the side, and begins to type up the notes that he can, from the first notebook onwards. He can properly organize them later, but he's going to have one folder for each notebook for now.

It's strange. If he got All Might's signature in any other circumstance, he's sure that he'd be framing it up in his room, constantly fawning over the time that he met All Might. But he never did meet All Might. All he got was the hazy memory of his idol, from a day that he doesn't _want_ to remember.

Perhaps he could organize his notes by hero? By year? By quirks involved? Maybe he could try a program that's specialized for processing and formatting data. The possibilities are endless. _Good_ , Izuku thinks, as he proceeds to drown his mind in the various caveats of organization and note-taking.

* * *

 **sports festival next chapter! aaaaa :D i s2g, u take a single kid out of yuuei and everything starts changing. i'll try to skim over canon stuff cuz. i know y'all have read through the same damn sports festival at least twenty times but i kinda wanna see what izuku would be like as a complete observer, hopefully it ain't too boring**

 **it might take a bit longer but it will definitely be a longer chapter i think. i'll try to get it over with in one chapter but no guarantees. i started writing it and the setup alone is like...2k words so yea i'm fucked :D god before this fanfic, all of my chapters would average at 1.5k words, what the fuck happened? struggles to write enough chapter have now become "oh shit this is getting too long"**


	4. soaring

_Two weeks earlier..._

A giant swarm of students stands in front of the door for Class 1-A. Little whispers of conversation occasionally burst out across the crowd, but they are quickly silenced by those towards the front of the crowd. It has only been a eight days since the start of the school year, but in that short time, various leaders have stepped forward in the various classes. Right now, the amazing amount of respect that they've garnered in such a short amount of time is keeping this...gathering from turning into a genuine riot. Not class presidents, class _leaders_. The type of people that have a sort of gravity that pulls the entire class towards them, the glue that holds everyone together.

Right now, Hitoshi can immediately identify two based on the whispers of conversations he's heard in the cafeteria. Hatsume Mei of Class 1-H, support department. Kendou Itsuka of Class 1-B, hero department. He has a feeling the two of them are only there to keep a tight leash on their fellow classmates, rather than to declare war on Class 1-A. Kendou is gripping the shoulder of some blond guy rather tightly, and all the gadgets strapped onto Hatsume's back give him the impression that her methods would be a touch more nefarious than whatever this is.

Hitoshi has always avoided the leader type throughout his school career. The type that everyone couldn't help but like, who had some sort of positive relationship with everyone in the classroom. The type that would make the effort to get him at least a little involved in the class. He'd like to say that he appreciated their efforts, but he saw that wobbly smile that they had, the way that they would try to get his phone number only through passed notes, and never by just _asking_. They must have thought he was stupid or something, to expect him not to notice.

Yuuei is nothing like any of the other schools he's been to. Sure, there might be some bitterness and condescension between classes, but within his own class, Class 1-C? There is a certain level of mutual respect. Hitoshi walked in on the first day expecting a bunch of sad scraps that hadn't gotten into the heroics department, but he had come to learn that that wasn't what the general department was. They are teenagers from all different walks of life, who have done something to deserve to get into the classroom, for reasons other than just becoming a hero. They are all recognized by Yuuei for something. Thus, they recognize each other for the ability to have clawed their way into the General Education department of the prestigious Yuuei.

The class dynamic of Class 1-C is surprisingly functional, considering that a fifth of its members are a bunch of bitter hero rejects. Hitoshi himself was so close to shutting himself off from the rest of his classmates so that he could silently and independently work to become a hero, but then _she_ walked in.

If Kendou Itsuka and Hatsume Mei had a gravity to them, then Uraraka Ochako was a goddamn blackhole, moreso than their homeroom teacher. Just moments after Hitoshi introduced himself with a, "Hello, I'm Shinsou Hitoshi and I'm going to transfer to class 1-A, so don't bother with getting to know me," Uraraka slammed his request into the ground. The girl just walked up to him with a bright smile, and had the nerve to ask to work together to become heroes with him. Naturally he said no, but her frequent pestering over the next three days made him give in. The worst part is he can't even act like an unapproachable asshole to Uraraka, because some part of him really wants to try having a friend. Working with her actually has its benefits too, because Uraraka managed to convince one of the faculty to train the two of them, which he couldn't manage with his complete lack of charisma.

It isn't just him that gravitates towards her, either, though their common goal has made her stick to his side like a starfish. She has the entirety of Class 1-C in her palm. For once in his lifetime, Hitoshi is thinking that maybe not all class leaders are snakes who'll act nice to his face and call _him_ a snake whenever he turns his back. Uraraka is proof of that.

He's actually really glad that Uraraka decided to approach him as an ally rather than an enemy. Because right now, the two of them are standing in front of the door of their common rival, and the look on her face is downright _terrifying_. It's this strange blend of determination, confidence and...bitterness? Hitoshi didn't peg her for the type, and he really doesn't think that it's for the same reason as him. Maybe he'll ask her later.

As the door to Class 1-A swings open, Hitoshi thinks to himself, _If you think that the General Education department is a pebble on the side of the road, then you have a big surprise coming at you._

* * *

Izuku knocks on the door in front of him, trying his best to wave when Fumiko opens the door to let him in. He barely manages the action, given that he has his laptop wedged between his right arm and his body. The other arm isn't an option either, because it's holding a giant, All Might plush ball.

Years of experience tell him that when you're settling down to watch the Yuuei Sports Festival, then you want to be as damn comfy as possible. A full day of watching adrenaline-packed activities can take its toll on a person, and Izuku expects it to be worse than usual, given that he's keeping an eye out for specific people this time. It's for this same reason that he drapes his softest blanket around his shoulders and wears the fuzziest pajamas he has on hand, with absolutely zero shame.

"You can just go to the living room, I think the Sports Festival starts in ten minutes," Fumiko says, walking towards the kitchen. Izuku does as she says, and upon entering the living room, sees Daichi splayed across the smaller couch. Daichi raises the bottle of apple cider in his hands, and takes a sip from it.

Izuku is about to voice his greetings, but quickly becomes horrified by what must be the biggest bowl of chips he's ever seen in his life. Clearly it shows, because Daichi is soon laughing at him, "That'll be lasting us throughout the day, unless you've somehow got even more of an appetite than our girl." Izuku...strongly doubts that he does. His mom always tells him he eats like a bird. "C'mon, sit down."

He looks around the room for a seat, and immediately makes his decision. There's no way that he can see the purple beanbag to the left of the room and _not_ sit in it. Hopefully, he doesn't look to eager when he wiggles over and plops his butt down onto the bean bag.

Fumiko walks in with some glasses of water. He mumbles a quick thanks, flipping open his laptop in front of him and settling in.

He still hasn't figured out a decent organization system for the sheer amount of notes he has to work with, but he at least starts up a new document for the Sports Festival.

"Do you usually watch the first years?" Fumiko asks.

Izuku shakes his head, his focus still on his laptop, "Not usually. I like to watch the third years, their skills are the most developed, and the challenges are more difficult, so it's interesting to watch. Plus, the preliminary notes I take on them help a lot for when they start their pro-hero careers in the next year. I like to predict whether they'll get stuck as sidekicks or build their own career."

"Oh my, sorry you're stuck watching the first years with us."

Izuku looks up from the laptop and shakes his head vehemently, "No, no, no! The first years are also great to watch too, they're probably my second favorite year to watch. No offense intended to the second years. I was already planning on watching the first year Sports Festival this year, what with the USJ. Though, there are a few that I really have an eye out for in Class 3-A but there's always recordings to look at later..." Izuku jerked his head up, realizing that he was starting to get into his classic muttering position. "Sorry!"

Daichi huffs, "Again, no need to apologize. We like hearing what you have to say." Izuku's heart nearly stops at that. Neither of them have worded it that way before. It was one thing for them to tolerate his words, but it was a completely different thing for them to actually care about what those words were. Even his mom had trouble keeping up with him sometimes, but he just couldn't stop the words from spilling out of his mouth.

"It's started!" Izuku yelps at the voice of Present Mic blaring out loudly even across a television. "Wow, they must really be taking advantage of the publicity from the USJ incident if they have Present Mic announcing for the first years. He usually only announces for the third years, because he's the best at it."

He can't stop himself from bouncing in the seat when Class 1-A walks out. The moment he sees Kacchan clearly on the television, he scrambles up to the screen and points at him. "Him!" He says oh so eloquently.

"He looks like an angry delinquent with the way he's standing." Daichi comments.

Izuku laughs nervously and gives a little nod. "Angry, yeah, but he's not a delinquent. He works very hard to maintain a spotless academic record."

The other classes walk onto the stage, and Izuku gets the faintest glimpse of a brown bob in the sea of students. "Go Ochako!" The two Urarakas yell in unison at the screen. Izuku would like to say he joins them, but he barely even realizes it's her by the time they finish speaking. He frowns a little.

"Oh!" Fumiko exclaims, "I can't see him here, but look out for Shinsou too. He's Ochako's friend, I think he's got purple hair sort of like..." She vaguely gestures with her hands, indicating hair that...sticks out? Izuku can't really imagine it, but he nods as if he can.

Apparently the referee this time around is Midnight. Apparently Izuku missed a few things, because _holy hell that's Kacchan walking towards the stage what is he doing oh my god_. Realization strikes him, as he whispers, "Oh no, he's the class representative." He should have figured, Kacchan definitely didn't make the fact that he placed first in the entrance exam go unknown after he got accepted to Yuuei.

Kacchan stops dramatically on the stage, looking down at the mic. Izuku's breath is trapped in his chest. "I pledge," Kacchan pauses for a moment, eyes narrowed at the audience, as if drilling his words into every person watching, "That I'll be number one." Kacchan turns to respond to some of the indignant cries of the students behind him, but Izuku isn't paying attention.

He's too busy trying to smother the giggles that are leaving him. _Goddamnit, no, don't laugh_ , he chides himself, but the efforts are fruitless.

"Oh my god," he wheezes, "That's the most Kacchan thing th-that," he bursts into more giggles, trying to catch his breath, "he could ever say. Everybody's going to hate him!" It's true, everyone will hate him, but Izuku knows that Kacchan's speech had a very specific intention that was kind of close to getting everyone to hate him.

It screamed, "Come at me with your all, so that I can show that I'm above you, even if you try your hardest."

Izuku is busy mildly losing his shit, so he almost misses the description of first challenge. It's an obstacle race, which seems normal enough, except it's Yuuei. There's no way that the event will be normal in any way whatsoever.

This becomes clear when an enormous amount of students fight to even start the race, all trapped by the massive number of people stuck at the race's entrance. It could be a result of bad design, but it's more likely that the first obstacle is...this. The primary contenders quickly make themselves known, as ice bursts out of the entrance of the race in a terrifying spout that rapidly freezes the entire wall. The source is obvious, as one boy runs in front of the masses of students frozen to the ground, sheets of ice spreading by his feet. There's a brief close-up view of the boy's face. His red and white hair looks like split down the middle almost perfectly, and his ice blue eyes are...chilling. _The same shade as Endeavor_ , Izuku thinks, as he looks into those dispassionate eyes. Izuku somehow manages to catch Present Mic calling him "Todoroki Shouto from Class 1-A", despite how little he's paying attention to the commentating.

It's not just Todoroki that pushes his way to the front, of course. Several students leap out of the way, or use their quirks to combat the ice that heads towards them. Kacchan is naturally amongst the fray.

What follows is absolute overkill, even for Yuuei. Izuku has heard enough from Yuuei students who talked to much to the media to know that Yuuei _loves_ robots. Robots for their entrance exams, robots for their finals...It's not the funding that's the problem, but as far as Izuku knows, they've never used them in the Yuuei Sports Festival. Despite the daunting task placed in front of him, Todoroki freezes the robots with an almost graceful ease. It's beyond impressive, but quickly becomes terrifying as those robots come crashing down. He sees two students trapped under a robot, and his breath is caught in his chest for a frightful few seconds. To his extreme relief, the two come bursting out in a sturdy glory.

When he sees the tightrope canyon and the minefields that follow, Izuku is sure that this has to be the most dangerous first event that he's seen in all the Sports Festivals he's watched. And he's seen more Sports Festivals than just the ones broadcasted during his lifetime. Usually the first event is the safest one, given that there are a lot of students who either aren't trained or aren't willing to take on giant robots and goddamn minefields. The obstacle course is a common first event, because it's great for weeding out a lot of competitors, but this has to be the most badass one Izuku has seen as of yet. Is Yuuei trying to prove a point?

Despite the difficulty of the course, several students hold a strong lead. Far in the front, though, are Todoroki and Kacchan, both wielding their quirks with a finesse that only comes from years and years of experience and practice (although Kacchan's mostly came at the expense of Izuku).

Except, wait. The stage is not owned by just those two because... _Holy shit, there's two people flying through the sky on a sheet of metal._

"Ochako!" Fumiko's voice is high and alarmed. And it is Uraraka, right alongside...Purple hair, tired eyes, bored expression, looks a bit like a mad scientist. Is this the Shinsou that was mentioned?

"Should that even be possible?" Izuku considers, "Maybe they propelled themselves with an explosion from the land mines? I would do that..."

"God, no, that wasn't it," Fumiko laughs, almost hysterical. Izuku supposes that watching your child catapult themselves through the sky would cause a considerable amount stress for any decent parent. He wonders why Daichi isn't saying anything, turning to look at him.

Daichi is just deep in thought, fingers tapping the side of his chin. "They'll pull it off."

Oh god, now they're hurtling towards the ground at a terrifying speed, at a steep slope that's almost vertical. Izuku winces, covering his vision with his fingers. He doesn't want to miss the end of the event though, so he curiously looks through his fingers.

Miraculously, the two that rocket towards the top ten don't go splat on the floor. Before it hits the ground, the metal jerks to a stop multiple times. It's definitely the use of a quirk, Izuku can figure out that much. He's just not sure whether the quirk belongs to Uraraka or Shinsou, or what that quirk exactly is. They land safely though, right in front of the exit of the race.

"How'd they even get that into the air, if it wasn't the mines?" Izuku asks, not really expecting an answer.

Daichi shrugs, "That Shinsou kid kicked it."

Izuku looks at Daichi incredulously, "Shinsou...kicked it?" Daichi doesn't elaborate though, and Izuku turns back to the television with a huff. He's almost starting to regret asking Daichi and Fumiko to not tell him about anyone's quirks.

Maybe that Shinsou dude is just...really buff? A strength enhancement quirk, perhaps? It doesn't explain their landing, though, so maybe that success can be attributed to Uraraka. Izuku has a feeling that he's looking at this in the wrong way. He usually never guesses right without sufficient information, but that should be changing soon.

It's the last few moments of the race, and the camera is now focusing on the exit arena of the course. Izuku eagerly waits to see which place Shinsou and Uraraka will get, especially since they landed not moments after Kacchan and Todoroki entered the final tunnel.

Todoroki is the first to come out, just the slightest bit ahead of Kacchan. Uraraka and Shinsou aren't coming out, though. One person, two, three, all the way to fourteen. Except. Wait, there they are. Number fifteen, Uraraka Ochako, and number sixteen, Shinsou Hitoshi, jogging forwards lightly. They both slow down to a stop, barely in the vision of the camera. Uraraka throws the crowd a peace sign, and Shinsou just tucks his thumbs into his pockets and gives Uraraka a crooked grin.

The three watching the Sports Festival are going wild with cheers. The event finishes as forty two people pass through the entrance, and Izuku's own cheers are replaced with a giant grin on his face.

He's a little disappointed when they announce what the second event is going to be. A cavalry battle? Maybe being extra in one event meant they couldn't be as extra in the others. Nevertheless, he's sure it'll be awesome, given that it's Yuuei. When they announce that first place is going to have the weight of million points on their head, Izuku briefly feels bad for Todoroki. It's all in the spirit of entertainment, though. Good old Yuuei extremity.

Thankfully, they're replaying clips from the obstacle race while teams are being made for the cavalry battle. Izuku can't imagine what watching live events would be like in the pre-quirk era, before so many versatile quirks related to vision and broadcasting were available. Izuku knows that Yuuei's own broadcast setup usually consists of the combined work of Pro Heroes Panopticon and Torrent. Panopticon has never made a public appearance as of yet, due to the nature of their missions, but they are known for their impressive undercover skills. Their quirk supposedly gives them the ability to exude spores that can keep track of sensory information within a certain range. The combination of Panopticon's sensory spore quirk and Torrent's memory downloading and uploading quirk results in the excellent footage that Yuuei sends to most major broadcasting networks.

Izuku really wants to know how on earth Uraraka and Shinsou managed to get that themselves up into the air like that, and he has no doubts that their stunt will be among the footage shown. He still has his doubts about Shinsou launching the two of them into the air with a kick. The clip plays, finally. The two of them are right by the minefields, and Uraraka goes from talking to Shinsou to setting a piece of metal in her hands on the ground, touching it with her hands. She then sits down on the metal, leaving room on it. And Shinsou just. Kicks it. It launches into the air, but not before Shinsou quickly leaps onto the metal. The metal doesn't even change trajectory, it just keeps on going like all other forces on the object have been nullified. _Maybe...?_ It's the slightest speculation, but Uraraka deliberately placing her fingers on the metal has to mean _something_.

If it's what he thinks it is, then Uraraka has the very strong advantage of others not knowing what her quirk is, nor what its activation conditions are. Most of the nation might have the chance to see the footage being played, but the people participating in the Sports Festival likely don't. "Is it five fingers for her to activate her quirk, or both hands?" Izuku asks, looking to Uraraka's parents. He still hasn't figured out the nature of her quirk, but he thinks he has the activation conditions down.

Fumiko holds up her hands, revealing little pads on the tips of her fingers. "Five fingers, she gets it from me. I won't tell you what her quirk does, but mine can cancel the magnetic field of objects. If I touch the fridge with all five fingers, our fridge magnets fall off of it, it's a bit of a pain."

"Is that why you always have those gloves on when you use the phone? The ones that only covers your thumbs?" Izuku asks. Izuku had noticed her using the gloves a few times, but he never really commented on it.

"Ah, I used to destroy so many phones as a kid. Not useful for much, either."

"Looks like the Cavalry Battle is starting." Daichi says, and Izuku's attention is once again caught by the television. The television is showing an aerial view of all of the competitors, in their cavalry formations. Izuku could spot Uraraka and Shinsou standing at the base of her team's cavalry formation, along with Shinsou. The two seem to be teamed up with a pink-haired girl with goggles and a ton of gadgets, as well as a boy with spiky black hair and a white and blue headband across his forehead. The black-haired boy sits on top of their formation,

Present Mic's voice fills the living room, "And here you have it!" A list of the teams appeared on the screen. Team Bakugou, Team Monoma, Team Todoroki, Team Asui, Team Kendou, Team Hagakure, Team Shiozaki, Team Awase, Team Rin, and Team Tsunotori.

"Which one is Uraraka's?" Izuku asks. Based on the lack of the response, none of the other two know either. There'll be room to figure it out. A running total of the different team's points displays on the television, and Izuku can at least eliminate some of the teams, "They aren't any of the bottom four teams, they have at least...275 points between them, not factoring in their other team members."

Ice immediately spikes out of the ground the very moment the cavalry battle starts, forming a dome around one of the teams. It looks like Team Todoroki is going immediately on the defensive, as they should with the bounty on their head. The dome probably isn't going to last long, judging by the number of teams that seem to be targeting Team Todoroki. Interestingly enough, Uraraka's team doesn't seem to be the same. They're towards the sides of the arena, and Shinsou is...having a conversation with the riding player of a three-person team? The girl on top of the formation ends up handing their team's headbands to him, with some struggle from the two people holding her up. The scoreboard shifts as Team Awase promptly gains 165 points, and Team Rin loses 165 points. That solves the question of which team they are.

Izuku is too interested in how Shinsou managed to get the girl to cordially hand over her headbands to pay attention to the rest of the competition. Team Awase continues to skirt around the edges of the arena, using what appears to be the powers of persuasion to get more headbands. Whatever they're doing, it's working. Despite the way they are steadily rising in the ranks of the competition, Present Mic fails to commentate on them. He can understand why, though, when there are much more interesting showdowns going on in the cavalry.

For example, there's the giant explosion that fills the arena. Izuku winces at the sound, his attention snapping back to the rest of the game.

Kacchan is clearly successful in dealing with Team Todoroki's impressive ice shield, because the ice dome shatters. They clearly didn't expect that to last the whole time, because they seem to have a second line of defense in place. The four members making up the team have earmuffs on, and in front of them is a giant disc mounted onto a stand. A girl at the base of their formation touches something on the device, and people closer to them move to shield their ears. One team even drops their rider, in their attempts to cover their ears. "What's this!" Present Mic exclaims, "Yaoyorozu from Class 1-A seems to have activated a device to create an ear-splitting sound, that one has got to hurt!" She clearly doesn't count on Kacchan's failure to react to the noise, because he launches forward, trying to snatch the headband on Todoroki's forehead. Izuku figures that the sound is at too high of a frequency for Kacchan to hear. One of his teammates tries to reel him back with tape, so that he doesn't land on the ground and disqualify the entire team. Kacchan doesn't get disqualified, but he doesn't get the headband, either.

It's probably a loss that they can afford, what with the number of headbands that the tape person, who he later learns is named Sero Hanta, has snagged. Izuku knows he's going to spend a lot of time brainstorming possible uses for that tape quirk, because it seems to be extremely versatile. Plus, tape can fix anything. Ripped your homework? Tape. Need a phone case? Tape. A cannon ball wrecked your building? Tape. Someone gave you a broken heart? Tape.

Kacchan refuses to pull away from Todoroki, even when the sound stops and the ice dome comes back up, but Sero still makes a grab at nearby team's headbands. At some point, Team Awase gets in their proximity, and Sero tries to snatch away some of the headbands that sit around Awase's neck, only to find that the headbands refuse to move. Perhaps the result of a quirk?

The Cavalry Battle ends relatively uneventfully, with Team Todoroki defending their position until the end, after having resurrected their ice dome. Kacchan looks extremely pissed, but his team comes second with the number of headbands that they managed to steal. Present Mic seems surprised when he declares that Team Awase is third, as if the team wasn't constantly moving around to get more points, subtle as they may have been. Maybe he's just playing it up for the dramatic effect. In fourth is Team Shiozaki, who Izuku recalls had an extremely strong defense, as well Shiozaki's mobile quirk, which allowed her to go for headbands from a distance.

For the second time in the day, the house is filled with cheers, as they celebrate Uraraka moving onto the final event of the Yuuei Sports Festival.

When the midday break is announced, Izuku opens his laptop up and starts to furiously type down some notes. It's mostly just preliminary notes, brief thoughts and speculations that are floating around in his head, that he'll start hammering into more solid theories and analyses when he's rewatching the event. By the time he's jotted everything down, lunch is ready, and he sits down and appreciates a meal from the Urarakas. He really needs to find a way to repay them. Maybe he can start returning the favor with his mom, when she comes back home.

They're eating around the television, forgoing their usual routine of eating around a dinner table, in case there's an update on the next event. Izuku is about to walk to the kitchen to place his dishes in the sink, when the final event is revealed. Of course, it's a tournament as it always is, but the format is always changing every year. Two on twos, single eliminations, double eliminations, round robins, and more.

This time, it looks like it's a plain old one on one single elimination tournament. Izuku bites his lips and crosses his fingers, as he waits for the tournament brackets to be posted. When it's displayed on the screen, he immediately seeks out the names that are of interest to him.

Uraraka Ochako versus Aoyama Yuuga. Bakugou Katsuki versus Tokoyami Fumikage. Shinsou Hitoshi versus Awase Yosetsu.

* * *

 **i couldn't finish the sports festival in one chapter, rip :\\\ not too proud of this chapter, i was kinda just trying to finish it at the end (gdfi shoulda just skipped the sports festival but there are some details that i wanted to mention) bUT hopefully y'all liked it? uhhh i'll try to make next chapter more interesting, i'm just wondering how to approach it i already have the battles planned out for the most part, except for one or two that i'll have to scrap**

 **this website is stupid and i have art included in this chapter, as well as the tournament bracket, but i can only do that on ao3. no links, either, so i can't link it to you on my tumblr. tbh you should read this there if you can so you can get the full experience. or you can check the tag "#tjof" on the tumblr account meowdiriya, if you really wanna see. i'm gonna use that tag for any extra content for this story.**

 **the tournament bracket (in order):**

 **shinsou hitoshi vs. awase yosetsu  
** **hatsume mei vs. iida tenya  
** **kaminari denki vs. shiozaki ibara  
** **todoroki shouto vs. sero hanta  
** **yaoyorozu momo vs. mina ashido  
** **aoyama yuuga vs. uraraka ochako  
** **tetsutetsu tetsutetsu vs. kirishima eijiro  
** **tokoyami fumikage vs. bakugou katsuki**


	5. center stage

**alright lemme just list my thoughts cuz there are a lot (enough that i have to split between beginning and end note)**

 **1\. i was gonna apologize for the delay, but...nah. this chapter is extra fucking long, and there were a variety of legitimate reasons i couldn't update on time. plus, y'all probably don't even notice that i have genuine deadlines for myself (the one for this chapter was thursday, july 17th).  
** **2\. after this, canon events will be either briefly mentioned/thrown out altogether. everything past the hideout raid arc will almost definitely be thrown out.  
** **3\. this chapter is probably pretty poorly edited, sorry. i wanted to get it out to y'all asap, so.  
4\. ****next update is probably gonna be in two weeks, i'm taking the extra time to start making solid plans of where i want to go with this story. i mostly have ideas, but i think now is about time for me to organize them into a pretty solid outline.**

* * *

"You can do it," Uraraka says with a determined smile on her face, giving Hitoshi a sharp nod. "Just remember, he knows your quirk."

Hitoshi gives her a sly smirk, "Does he, though?" Uraraka responds with a raised eyebrow. Leaving her off with a shrug, Hitoshi turns his back to her and heads off to the first match of the tournament. Awase might have been in his cavalry battle team, and he might have seen Hitoshi's quirk in use every step of the way, but that didn't mean he knew what exactly that quirk was.

It's as Kayama-sensei said. Misdirection is the key.

Hitoshi isn't a strong guy. He might be cunning, but he isn't particularly intelligent on the battlefield. He's got pretty much nothing going for him except for his quirk, and even that can turn into a bit of a one-trick pony, if he doesn't take great care in how he presents himself.

Awase is the perfect guinea pig for something that he's trying out. Hitoshi's quirk might be activated by someone responding to his own voice, but...If Awase sees Hitoshi strike a conversation with a person, and use his quirk on them long after he's gotten a response...Well, it's on Awase if he concludes that the activation for his brainwashing quirk is something like brushing someone's skin or making eye contact with them. Sure, Hitoshi risks a few seconds by delaying the activation of his quirk,

And right now, standing in front of Awase? It feels exhilarating. Thrilling. And Hitoshi knows he's got this in the bag, because Awase _won't look at him_. It's a kind of control he's never felt over his quirk, one where the person he's speaking to doesn't know what to expect from him. People can avoid his voice, they can avoid speaking to him, but they can't avoid his entire existence. So they're forced to make a guess at what the activation condition for his quirk is, and more likely than not, they'll guess wrong.

Maybe he's being a little cocky right now, but it's not like Awase isn't doing the same. "My quirk isn't useful for much when I've got nothing out here to work with, but..." Awase starts, getting briefly interrupted by Cementoss' slow cue for the beginning of the battle. "I saw you looking in each of those people's eyes when you commanded them around. We're both fighting quirkless." The 'You're not in the heroics course like I am, so your basic fighting skills must be worse than mine,' is left unsaid, but Hitoshi is sure that the sentiment is lying somewhere underneath Awase's words.

"So you've figured it out," Hitoshi says, a satisfied grin creeping over his face. "Let's fight, then." And with that, the two of them rocket forward, Awase tugging off the blue and white headband on his forehead.

Awase Yosetsu, Class 1-B, from the heroics course. Awase clearly doesn't see his own quirk as something to hide, as he was quick to reveal it before the cavalry battle commenced, so that the four of them could make a proper strategy. Bonding. The ability to fuse objects together at an atomic level, provided that he is touching both objects. Hitoshi has a feeling that Awase's quirk isn't completely useless in this current scenario, especially when that headband seems a touch wider than it was during the cavalry battle.

Hitoshi has had some training in combat thanks to Kayama-sensei, but it can't stop Awase from disappear from his sight in the span of a moment. Shit. He still hasn't made the connection to Awase's mind.

Blue and white cloth wraps itself around Hitoshi's mouth and nose, and he is briefly seized by terror. The worst moment for him to figure out the opponent's strategy is when he's already been ensnared in the trap, but such is the unfortunate life of Shinsou Hitoshi. In a desperate move, Hitoshi speaks a muffled few words against the cloth on his mouth. It's barely enough, but...

"Got you," Awase says. Hitoshi can feel the connection snapping to the front of his mind, visualizing it as a fine thread between himself and Awase. He gives the string a mental tug, and is satisfied to find that the string doesn't snap. If it can't handle a brief nudge, it can't handle an entire command.

Hitoshi doesn't have much time to pull this off, though. Not with the way Awase's fingers brush against his cheek. He can feel his lungs stuttering, as their only sources of oxygen get cut off by the headband that's bonded to his face. Hitoshi turns to look Awase in the eye, deciding that, even in this desperate situation, it's worth it to not leave Awase with any questions about his quirk.

Short words. The command has to count. "Release quirk." Awase probably can't hear it, the words whispered through cloth, on used up oxygen, but that's the thing about his quirk. His target doesn't necessarily have to hear the command. The verbal commands mostly serve as the trigger to send a command from his mind to his target's. Hitoshi isn't even sure if it's necessary, but that's the way he best knows his quirk.

It doesn't matter how it works, though, because it works, and Hitoshi is left taking in lungfuls of air in order to prepare for his next command. He might have had his air supply cut off for only a few moments, but speaking while not breathing really took its toll on him. At least he has all the time he needs. As long nothing jolts the mental connection that he's holding onto in his mind.

He speaks the moment he has the ability to, "Walk out of the arena." _What an anticlimactic ending_ , he thinks, watching Awase step out of the arena in a daze. He has to say, though, Awase put up a good fight. He wasn't expecting much of a struggle from his part. The thought that he might be underestimating the hero course students briefly crosses over his mind, but he shrugs it off. There's still a point that he's got to prove, to the hero course, to Yuuei, and to himself. That he's got what it takes to be a hero.

"And would you look at that, Shinsou Hitoshi wins with an unexpected forfeit from Yosetsu Awase! Could this Gen Ed nobody be a dark horse of this tournament?"

* * *

"Huh?" Izuku says, confused. "He just walked out? Clearly some sort of command-based quirk...But what does he need in order to give a command? Otherwise he would have just done that from the beginning. Plus, that would be too powerful of a quirk."

"I'm sure you can figure it out in the next match," Daichi says, pointing to the TV with another bottle of apple cider in his hands, "But the next match is starting."

"Oh! I want to see the youngest of the Iida family in action!" What follows certainly doesn't live up to Izuku's expectation. At some point, he loses the heart to watch Iida Tenya being subjected to the horrors of Hatsume Mei's advertisement, so he just flips his laptop open and browses some of the Yuuei Sports Festival threads on The Guard's Archives. Apparently a very intense game of extreme duck duck goose is occurring on a tilting platform in the second year Sports Festival, and it's going on a lot longer than expected. That's one reason to be glad he's watching the first year Sports Festival, he doesn't have to wait past 3 PM to eat lunch.

At long, long last, the Iida Tenya vs. Hatsume Mei match ends, with Hatsume stepping out of the boundaries. What a power move.

Next is Shiozaki Ibara and Kaminari Denki, which is a match that's delightfully short compared to the prior one. Kaminari releases an amount of electricity from his body that's beyond impressive, but it's quickly deflected by a shield of vines from Shiozaki. Kaminari is then held up in the error by a terrifying spiral pillar of vines.

Kaminari's quirk seems pretty straightforward, but what about Shiozaki's? There are so many things to explore there, like how she severs the vines from her hair, or how she still has control over the vines. And if she can control the vines that sprout from her hair, can she control other plants too, or just those vines? How did she control the growth of her vines even after they'd been severed from her head? How many vines could she produce? If the vines got damaged, what would happen to her?

Unfortunately for Izuku, these questions would probably remain unsolved until later matches, or even until later Sports Festivals if the following matches were as short as this one. Izuku types the questions down, though, and gears up for the next battle.

Both of the competitors for the next match are both ones that Izuku has his eyes on. Everyone probably had his eye on Todoroki's powerful ice quirk, and Izuku had no doubt that he'd be a very strong hero. As for Sero, well. Izuku is curious about the applications of his quirk. The matchup is extremely unfavorable for Sero, though. A tournament with this setup puts those with quirks that work best with other objects at a disadvantage, because the stadium is completely clear. Sero could use his tape to immobilize Todoroki, but Todoroki has already shown himself capable of generating massive amounts of ice in a short amount of time. Todoroki could easily immobilize Sero first.

That is exactly what happens. Izuku is kind of sad to see the match end so quickly, with Sero frozen inside a ice structure that fills the stadium. He didn't even get a chance to see what kind of strategy Sero would employ.

After the ice is finally melted, Yaoyorozu Momo faces off against Ashido Mina. Yaoyorozu quickly and effectively takes down Ashido by wrapping her up in tape. Ashido spreads acid along the floor, but somehow, Yaoyorozu steps on it without a problem.

"It's Uraraka's turn now," Izuku says a little nervously. He has no idea who Aoyama is, or what their quirk is, but hopefully Uraraka can deal with it.

The two step onto the stadium, and Izuku vaguely remembers who Aoyama is. He's the person who was using the lasers in the first event. The laser seems to only be a highly concentrated beam, so Uraraka's main course of action should be to dodge those. He can't really think of any strategies to take beyond that, because he doesn't know much about her quirk beyond the fact that it's a five-point activated quirk.

Uraraka seems to have it figured out, though, because she leaps out of the way of a laser beam as soon as the match starts, and quickly moves towards Aoyama. Aoyama moves back to maintain his distance, probably because his quirk is more of a long-distance one. In the process, though, he gets closer and closer to the boundary line until he's forced to confront Uraraka.

Who slaps him hard on the face with her hand. And just like that, the outcome of the match is decided. Uraraka uses a strong kick to send him flying into the walls of the arena.

"Aoyama is out of bounds," Cementoss' voice says, projected by his mic, "Uraraka Ochako moves onto the second stage."

After that is Kirishima Eijiro vs. Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu which is...honestly more amusing than anything. Their quirks are so similar that they end up passing out from exhaustion, probably quirk exhaustion. It's announced that it'll be settled with a wrestling match.

As for the next match...Well, honestly Izuku is kind of rooting for Tokoyami instead of Kacchan. _Am I a bad person for wishing my childhood friend to fail?_ He thinks guiltily, before shaking the thought out of his head. That's not it! Tokoyami just looks like a cool dude with a very powerful quirk, that's why Izuku wants him to win.

It doesn't matter what he wants, though, because it winds up just being a terrible matchup on Tokoyami's end. The match comes to a quick conclusion after a large explosion from Kacchan reduces Tokoyami's companion shadow to...a shadow of its former self. Ahaha. Ha. Haha. (Izuku never claimed that he was good at making puns.) Honestly, he should have figured that Kacchan would win.

Afterwards is the tiebreaker between Kirishima and Tetsutetsu, which he uses as an excuse to eat a bunch of chips from the enormous chip bowl. An arm wrestling match isn't all that interesting. When Midnight makes the call, "Kirishima Eijiro has won the tiebreaker, he will move onto the next match," Izuku comes to a realization.

"How come Midnight wasn't the referee for Uraraka's match?" Izuku asks, turning to look at Daichi and Fumiko.

Daichi grins, "Why don't you figure it out yourself, kid?" Izuku huffs. Sure, he did ask them for minimal information, but sometimes he wanted to know things. He's starting to regret not taking advantage of the information that Uraraka's parents had, information that few others had access to.

Izuku decides to retaliate with his own discoveries, "She can nullify the forces acting on an object if she touches the object with five fingers. I'd say it's just gravity, but with the inertia that Aoyama had, as if he was unhindered by things such as air resistance until he hit the wall...Am I right?" He finishes off a little nervously, tapping his fingers together. It isn't too hard to put together, but he doubts that any of the competitors will get the chance to figure it out, unless they too saw the footage of her in the obstacle race.

Daichi clicks his tongue, "Damn, kid. Do you have an analysis quirk or something?"

He chuckles nervously in response. "No, I just...like doing this. It's been a hobby since I was five or six." He never really...said anything about his quirk to the Urarakas. It wasn't like he was trying to keep the information from them, but direct questions about people's quirks were usually considered rude (though that never stopped Izuku). It just never came up. Honestly though, he's not sure he would tell them he was quirkless if they asked. He doesn't want to risk what the three of them have right now.

"Hm...You've got anything on Shinsou?" Daichi asks, pointing at the TV.

Izuku whips his head towards the television, almost yelling, "What, they've started already? Wait no, Iida is already walking out of bounds! Nooo, I missed it..." He presses his face into his hands when the match ends with Shinsou winning. "I'm not too sure for him, though. It probably involves verbal commands, he was talking to other teams in the Cavalry Battle when they handed over their headbands, I don't think that he's just very persuasive. There's not enough to go off of."

After taking his moment to briefly mourn the missed match, he sits attentive for the next three matches.

Todoroki and Shiozaki both have very powerful quirks capable of generating large amounts of matter for their respective elements, but it ends with Todoroki winning. Unlike his fight with Sero, he started by frosting over the arena, which prevented Shiozaki from properly rooting her plants into the ground. Whatever did get into the ground quickly wilted, probably from the frost damage. Strangely enough, the match ended with Shiozaki _passing out_.

Uraraka wins the next match against Yaoyorozu with the same quick action she took against Aoyama. Yaoyorozu ends up to overwhelmed by the speed that Uraraka uses to produce anything substantial enough to protect her from Uraraka's approach. One fronthand slap and another backhand slap is all it takes to end it. Maybe if Izuku ever winds up talking to her, he can bring up making her movements less obvious. Or something other than just slaps.

"Oh, she's in the top four!" Fumiko exclaims, "Didn't I tell you, Midoriya, she'd be on the podium!"

Daichi stops her optimism in its tracks, "Now, she's still got one more match to go. Whoever wins between Bakugou and Kirishima..."

And in the end, it's Kacchan who wins against Kirishima. Of course it is. Izuku wants to say that he believes in Ochako's ability to win, but...

In Izuku's mind, Kacchan is still held up on that enormous pillar of heroic admiration. He can't lose, because Kacchan doesn't lose. It's a core tenant of the universe, something as unquestionable as water being wet.

Sure, Izuku had the faintest _hope_ that Tokoyami would win, but it was just that. A hope. A foolish fantasy. He can't say the same for Uraraka, a person he's heard enough about to feel as if he actually knows her. Not for Uraraka, who's future quite possibly hangs on this battle. How far does she have to go to enter the heroic course? Does she have to just prove herself? Does she have to get onto the podium? Does she have to win the entire tournament. Too much hangs on a match against Kacchan. Again Kacchan who never backs down, Kacchan who takes on the world with his middle finger raised, Kacchan who _doesn't fucking lose_.

He's so wrapped up into his anxieties that he barely processes Shinsou getting grand-slammed by Todoroki.

* * *

Four weeks ago, Ochako probably might have been scared shitless at the thought of facing one of the top candidates of the Sports Festival. Not now, though, because that was then, and this is now. Now, she has a plan.

Bakugou better be prepared for what she's going to rain down on him, because she cannot afford to lose. She doesn't care what kind of superiority complex he has. If she misses her chance at this Sports Festival, then that's entire potential year, two years, _all_ years of learning to be a hero lost.

The battle starts with a bang, predictably. Rather, it starts with her trying to get close to Bakugou, only to be be blasted away with the simple redirection of his palms. She's set on a collision course with the ground, so she decides to roll with it. She places her hands on the floor as she stumbles, pushes off of the ground a little with her feet, and lands on her shoulder so that she can use the momentum to roll back up on her feet. That solid hour of being pushed onto the floor by Shinsou so that she could learn to fall properly doesn't seem so useless anymore.

 _No matter_ , she thinks, brushing the dust off of her face and ignoring the sting of her palms as she looks for the best path for her to take. She has to think quickly, before the dust fades away.

There. Right in the previous line of fire, a path of rocks trailing up to Bakugou. She keeps low to the ground as she walks forward, letting her finger pads skim across the rocks. The rocks are barely hovering above the ground, not high enough for one to realize that they're even floating.

Another blast sends her back, as soon as Bakugou pinpoints her position. Good. He has to keep them coming, otherwise Ochako will have nothing to work with. She knows her only chance of winning is getting close, against an opponent whose quirk seems almost built for keeping her away from him. The only matchup worse than this than she can think of would be if she had to go against Todoroki's long-distance ice attacks. Which she will, when she wins.

Get close. Touch some rocks. Get blasted away. Fall, and stand right back up. Rinse, and repeat, and rinse, and repeat, and rinse, and repeat. It's exhausting, it's terrible, it hurts, but she needs to do this for herself. She needs to do this, to save people ( _so that they aren't left alone, trapped under a pile of rubble, crying for help_ ). And she's sure she's got ten times the hero in her than this guy with hellfire in his eyes, someone who's blown up enough in the cafeteria for even the third years to know that he's bloodthirsty, antagonistic, and shamelessly so. If she can't even prove that she can take on this guy, then what are her ambitions to be a hero worth?

She's straining herself, she knows it, but _that's what a fucking hero does_. There was no savior for her on the day of the entrance exam, nothing but the zero point robot's safety mechanism pausing its hulking foot right above her body. But she likes to think that if someone ever did come to help her, that it would be someone with enough heart and passion to rush into danger, just to save her on pure instinct, regardless of the sacrifice it would cause them. That was always the kind of hero she imagined herself to be, under her motivations to become a hero just for the money. It's no longer just about the money for her, and, honestly? It might have never been. Because who tries to join a career that takes three years of education to get the first paycheck, when there were more immediate ways to get the money? It's not just about the paycheck, because if it was, then she'd be the kind of hero to leave neighborhoods like her own riddled with crime.

No, now she's becoming a hero so that she can prove to _herself_ that the hero she wants to exist _does_ exist. Ever since the Yuuei entrance exams, she's started having her doubts about the matter.

Hey, maybe if she punts this self-absorbed asshole into the stratosphere, he'll pull his head out of his ass long enough for him to see the world around him.

Her plan is...Kind of convoluted, if she's being honest with herself. Using herself as a distraction just to set up another distraction that will let her slap the goddamn guy and levitate him out of bounds? Ochako has heard a lot about Recovery Girl, and she really hopes this battle doesn't have to get to the point where she has to go to the infirmary, because she might not make it out of that interaction alive.

It seems that she won't have to, though.

Kayama-sensei has had a whole lot of advice to impart to Shinsou and herself in the short span of two weeks. Among the more helpful tidbits she gave them were the words, "Some battles will be hopeless. But your opponent has limits, so find them. And if you can't find them, flee."

Ochako sure as hell isn't fleeing, but she doesn't even have to consider it. Clearly Bakugou was expecting to get her out of the way with a few quick, strong blasts, not unlike what Todoroki Shouto did to Sero Hanta in the first round. Because the blasts are getting smaller and smaller. She's actually glad that Bakugou Katsuki seems to have hit a limit of his own, because she's pretty sure she's hefting a solid 2.5 tons of rock right now. Just beneath her limit. She stops trying to gather more ammo for her final attack, because any more will definitely make her pass out. Plus, the small blasts that Bakugou generates are hardly enough to cover up what she's doing. Maybe whatever fuels Bakugou's explosions has run out?

"Come and face me!" Bakugou yells. Maybe she's tricking herself into thinking that it's desperation she's hearing in his voice, but...Hell if she isn't hearing it. In a spur of the moment decision, she makes a change to her original plan.

Eyes closed. Take a steady breath.

Ochako's eyes snap open, and a field of rocks raises into the air, forming a ring of rocks around Bakugou. Operation Meteor Belt, begin.

Honestly, it's a bit like over-glorified target practice. Light taps on the rocks are all it takes to send them hurtling towards Bakugou, who is forced onto the defensive. Bakugou's hands are crossed in front of him, darting out to blast the rocks that fly towards him. She uses a kick to send one of the rocks onto a slightly different path, to confirm that Bakugou is paying more attention to the rocks than to her. After that, she varies the way she hits the rock, going from hitting the rocks straight on to using different body parts and different angles. For this to work, Bakugou has to be paying more attention to where the rocks seem to be coming from, than to where she is.

Why? Well, simple. She's closing on him. Between the rocks being pelted towards Bakugou without air resistance or gravity holding them back, and the stationary rocks that are floating on the air, he can either choose to get hit by the rocks or blast his way out of her trap. Since he's chosen to sit still, all she has to get close enough, and...

"Boo," she says, slapping him on the back. Bakugou turns back with a nasty snarl on his face, and sends a blast towards her that has her slamming into her own rocks, but that isn't enough to save him.

Ugh. Ochako can feel her stomach churning, the weight of what she's holding up finally hitting her. But she can't release everything she's holding up, not yet. She's almost there.

Bakugou flies up into the air, but he's still technically within the bounds of the arena. She doesn't have to worry much, though, because it's his own quirk that eventually leads to his downfall. The guy might be able to maneuver in the air with his explosions, but Bakugou seems not to have factored the lack of gravity into his equation. She can't blame him, few have enough experience with being under zero gravity circumstances to know how to adjust accordingly. It's kind of funny seeing him fly into the audience, though.

Meanwhile, Ochako crawls to a spot where rocks don't hover dangerously above her. The moment she's declared the winner, she forces her hands to make the necessary gesture for her to release objects from the effects of a quirk. Her hair falls over her face, and her vision starts getting really fuzzy. The word "release" is barely whispered, completely lost in the loud cacophony of the cheering crowd.

Ochako falls unconscious before she has the chance to revel in her victory.

* * *

...

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Forum: The Next Generation

Thread: 1st Year YSF Discussion

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 **Pinned by Admin RedDeadSea**

 **[Admin] RedDeadSea - 1003 rep**

alright ya lil shits don't let last year happen i will not fucking hesitate to ban.

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 **[Member] feredae - 34 rep**

Oh sweet lemme start this off by saying holy fuck class 1-a almost dominated that competition, 11/16 of the people who made it to the tournament were class 1-a?

 _3 likes / 1 dislike_

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 **[Regular] canidaecreep - 247 rep**

I mean, we could deliberate on the different strategies that Class 1-A and Class 1-B took as an entire class, which ultimately led to 1-B's downfall, but if you want to talk domination, then I'm going to quickly yank the topic of this discussion to the part that actually matters. The Wonder Duo of the general education department, Shinsou Hitoshi and Uraraka Ochako. Shinsou Hitoshi, experiencing a crushing defeat at the hands of Powerhouse #1: Todoroki Shouto after a series of easy victories, only to put one over on Powerhouse #2: Bakugou Katsuki, and climb his way to third place. Uraraka Ochako, keeping her quirk carefully concealed from her opponents, claiming her stake on the top two positions of the competition in her fiery battle with Bakugou Katsuki, where she proceeded to kick his ass. Aaaand then she was too injured to continue to the final round, but damn girl, you've got spunk.

I mean. Holy shit. A general education student making it onto the podium? There have only been five recorded instances of that happening, two of which I don't have on hand right now (I'll edit this post later once I look back at old Sports Festival results). Shino Sosaki, Aizawa Shouta, and Emi Fukukado, two of which have gone on to become the known heroes, Mandalay and Ms. Joke. Interestingly enough, these all occurred within four years of each other, during the start of the golden age of heroics. Two general education students making it onto the podium, though? Completely unprecedented. I do think that the results of this competition will spark a rather profound discussion. Who knows what direction that'll take, but hopefully mainstream media will start to discuss more of the things that we like to talk about here. As in, the constant "Yuuei is a giant pile of administrative fuckups piled into a single heroics school" debacle.

Honestly, I'm all for the Wonder Duo. When's the last time you've seen two people actually cooperating during an obstacle race, because it sure doesn't happen often. Whoever they are, they're familiar with each other. They both seem pretty resourceful with their quirks, as well. The look in Shinsou's eyes when he was facing off against Todoroki, the utter relentlessness that Uraraka used in attacking Bakugou...That's the kind of stuff I'd like to see in the heroics industry more. Catch me praying for them to transfer to the heroics course. It's a shame that we never got to see Uraraka v. Todoroki. From what I understand of the general education to heroics transfer process (as little as it is mentioned), the more opportunities you have to prove yourself, the better. You could hypothetically get in even if you got out in the first round, but it isn't very likely. That missing battle might be the difference between her making it in or not. Still, she got to second place, which is impressive enough in and of itself.

 _34 likes / 4 dislikes_

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 **[New] SyllphicIllusions - 5 rep**

wait did yuuei ever release anymore information on why she wasn't able to participate in the final round? i think they said something about her being in the infirmary, but damn that sucked, i rly would've liked to see a gen ed kid in first

 _0 likes / 0 dislikes_

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 **[Member] inualia - 13 rep**

anyone else exist for canidae's posts

 _0 likes / 0 dislikes_

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 **[Member] yellowmeownace - 792 rep**

im working on my yearly breakdown of quirks rn but while i still have the thought on the top of my mind, **canidaecreep** , re: uraraka v todoroki, imo she...probably would have lost. her matchup with bakugou katsuki was definitely not in her favor, because his blasts are capable of being long range attacks that are great at keeping her away, but her advantage in that battle was that...at the end of the day it looks like bakugou is more of a close range fighter. he can keep her away with his quirk but he obv couldnt keep that up for long

todoroki though? long range all the way, his whole schtick seems to be keeping people away whereas uraraka probably needs to be more close range. the thing she set up in her battle against bakugou probably wouldnt have worked as a "long range" attack against todoroki bc at the end of the day she still has to get close in order to use her quirk. plus todoroki could easily construct a defensive dome like he did in the cavalry battle, unless there are some limits to his quirk that hes yet to reveal with the sheer amount of ice hes managed to produce over the course of the entire sports festival...but more on that later lmfao

and tbh if yuuei doesnt transfer those two over to heroics (provided that they want to) ill flip. the worst part is we cant even know if they got transferred until the next sports festival bc yuuei isnt v public about the transfer process. i think they more than proved themselves, especially uraraka

 _43 likes / 13 dislikes_

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 **[Member] Deku - 29 rep**

 **SyllphicIllusions** she couldn't go to the next round bc of quirk exhaustion, i think? it looked like she was using her quirk for a solid ten minutes so it might be a time limit (or maybe a weight limit)

i might be wrong tho don't trust me on that ;w;

 _2 like / 0 dislikes_

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 **[Member] yellowmeownace - 792 rep**

 **Deku** yea i was def thinking something along those lines. i dont think its a time limit cuz she probably would have started using her quirk later on but u can see that she starts touching rocks in the first minute of the fight

anywhooooooooo more on that in my next post (im almost done i swear)

 _5 likes / 0 dislikes_

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 **[Member] kissmyass123 - 73 rep**

brb stanning bakugou you can fight me on it if you want to (๑･`▱´･๑)

 _10 likes / 14 dislikes_

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 **[Member] feridae - 34 rep**

 **kissmyass123** Yeah, no fucking duh you do i was waiting for you to drop in here and say that you're so fucking predictable (and not in the good way)

 _3 likes / 9 dislikes_

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 **[Member] yellowmeownace - 792 rep**

ALRIGHT THE MOMENT NYALL HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR it is...yellows kickass quirk conversation (i tried alliterating, i really did)

Show spoilers

whoops that was a long post maybe ill start an individual thread for everyone else again sorry for this mess of a post. oh, and expect a much more detailed breakdown on what i think the results for todoroki v uraraka would have been (spoilers: the end result for the tournament would still be the same, if u didnt gather from my above post)

OOOOOOKAy now its 4:30 am GOOD NIGHT

 _78 likes / 24 dislikes_

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 **[Member] kissmyass123 - 73 rep**

 **feridae** dude do you want to fight because i know your goddamn address, i will cut you bitch

 _2 likes / 13 dislikes_

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 **[Member] feridae - 34 rep**

 **kissmyass123** Everyone knows you're the most inflammatory users on this website, the only reason you're still around is because you're buddy buddy with one of the admins

 _14 likes / 10 dislikes_

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 **[Member] feridae - 84 rep**

 **Quote from yellowmeownace:  
** "wait wait i...lmfao GOOD NIGHT"

And yellow i know we generally love you but this is a mess and also go the fuck to sleep

 _0 likes / 0 dislikes_

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 **[Member] free-glee-fighter - 25 rep - BANNED**

 **Quote from yellowmeownace:  
** "ALRIGHT THE MOMENT...be the same)"

dude nobody knows what the fuck this says if ur gonna post at least make it make sense

and what makes you think that a.) awase's quirk is bonding objects when we hardly saw anything of anything and b.) at least offer some proof that hatsume's quirk is what you said it is if youre going to know her family which by the way is a bunch of famous inventors that i doubt the likes of you would know, it's much more likely something related to inventing based on her family

 _3 likes / 9 dislikes_

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 **[Member] yellowmeownace - 792 rep**

 **free-glee-fighter** look i was gonna go to sleep but then i saw you here and...do you want a smackdown because i can give you a smackdown! it makes perfectly good sense, you just arent trying :^)) awases quirk: did u see sero hanta trying to steal the headband away from him? unlike every other headband, it wouldnt come off. it was stuck there. not to mention, the odd placement of his headbands on his neck, that wasnt the placement of headbands resting on the neck normally, that was the placement of headbands hanging off of something, notably his neck. it probably isnt bonding objects to his skin only, though, based on the shinsou v awase battle. he let go of that headband, and it stuck onto shinsou until he...i guess ordered awase to release his quirk (at which point he touched the headband and shinsous face again). it might just be skin tho i dont owe u any fucking proof, thats between my family and the hatsumes. also quirkist much? like daaaamn ur thinking is outdated if you think that someones quirk has to be related to their profession, u kno thinking like that is the reason that 85% of japanese ppl end up picking professions where their quirk is beneficial (source) which is thought to be connected to why 70% of japan's working force says they regret the profession they picked (source \+ discussion threads 1, 2, 3 and 4) do you know anything about making shit cuz...as a Robotics Kid™, hatsume's quirk is useful as SHIT for engineering stuff but clearly you havent tried getting a nut onto a bolt thats in a low visibility, hard to access area. my poor lil fingers could have been spared if i had her quirk and thats just ONE situation where its useful

 _26 likes / 17 dislikes_

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 **[Admin][Regular] RedDeadSea - 4003 rep**

i told you guys. i fucking TOLD YOu! why do sports festival threads always end up devolving to shit?

 **free-glee-fighter** banned, bitch. you know the forum rules, no bigoted behavior, and all ideas are to be at least considered. the guard's archives prides itself on the environment it works to foster, where everyone's thought are at least considered. whether it's obvious things like "endeavor is a shitty hero who would be earning himself lifetimes in prisons were he not the #2 hero" to more bizarre shit like "ingenium gave information to the league of villains that allowed them to infiltrate yuuei" (which. is a popular theory, strangely enough). whatever it is, we consider it. especially when it's from **yellowmeownace** , our friendly insomniac friend that is widely respected for his analyses and brutal smackdowns. be glad that he was probably too sleepy to give you the full dose of his fury.

 **feridae** please don't fight with **kissmyass123** , and i'd appreciate if you would not accuse the administrators of favoritism.

 **kissmyass123** while they are partially to blame, **feridae** is right. you more or less are one of our more...antagonistic forum users. you've already gotten 2 warnings. don't make me ban you, get your shit together, and make up with **feridae** , whoever they are to you. watching the two of you bicker all the time is a giant headache for us.

 **yellowmeownace** ur doing great, kid. just. keep doing ur thing. although, i'd tell you to keep the smackdowns to the pms, but i've already told you to do that like...10 times. and honestly, they're pretty entertaining to read?

i'm locking this thread, so let's try this again.

Link to 1st Year YSF Discussion, Try #2

 _143 likes / 10 dislikes_

 **\- THREAD LOCKED -**

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 **apologies for the excess of line breaks on the last part, it's the only way to make it accessible on this goddamn website. it looks so much nicer on ao3 because i have it all formatted and everything but here i had to use the line breaks just to distinguish between different posts. this website doesn't even let me use the _at symbol_ , goddamnit. and the bold parts aren't showing so it's really hard to read, sorry!**

 **in case it wasn't clear in the final part, uraraka wasn't allowed to fight in the final round due to quirk exhaustion, and todoroki automatically got first. and shinsou won against bakugou. making the final rankings 1. todoroki, 2. uraraka, 3. shinsou.**

 **more thoughts listed out!**

 **1\. i made uraraka win against bakugou, i know. just. deal with it aksdjaslkd**  
 **2\. if uraraka or shinsou seem ooc, well. whoops? i've never really written them. although, i will say that uraraka's perspective/motivations/etc. are different from canon due to changed events, if my writing failed to highlight that.**  
 **3\. i kind of regret writing this arc because it's like. half of the story now. but it helped me think about shit, helped me flesh out some secondary characters. i would appreciate if u let me know if you'd have preferred me to skip over it!**  
 **4\. i actually. wrote a whole thing for yellowmeownace's rant on everyone's quirks (the part where it says "Show spoilers"). again, on my tumblr, meowdiriya, under the tag "#tjof". honestly, y'all should read this on ao3, it's so much nicer.**


	6. idolization

**note: changed the story name from "the jaws of futility" to "four past two" because i doubt anyone would get the reference. (it's from. homestuck.)**

 **uhhh god i had a whole thing where i explained why vig deku is taking a while to get to but i can't link it on so tl;dr vigilante deku is _not_ the focus of the story but you can expect it in 2-3 chapters. well. 1-2 now. hopefully. hopefully. shit never goes as planned.**

* * *

Izuku isn't doing much right now. Just. Laying on the bed, looking up at the ceiling, and trying to find shapes in its popcorn texture. There's a chicken, there's a boot, there's a knife, there's a cow. When he hears the door creaking open, though, he first stills, before quietly stepping over to his closet. It takes him a few seconds to find it, and just like that, he's armed with a steel bat. Whoever calls his mom a needlessly worried person is a fool that will have him to speak to.

The last thing he's supposed to do is approach the intruder, but, hell. He's too anxious to sit still and wait for them to come to him. Upon stepping out into, he catches sight of a very specific shade of green. Midoriya green. Izuku drops his bat, saying the first thing that comes to him, "Ma-ow", he yelps. Yeah, leave it to good old Deku to drop a steel bat on his toes.

"Izuku!" Inko exclaims, running to the fridge, while Izuku curses under his breath. She comes back with an ice pack, pushing Izuku towards the couch. "Sit, sit." She says fretfully, giving him the ice pack and stacking up some pillows for him to lie his feet on.

The classic Midoriya welcome. "Ma, you never told me you were going to come home," Izuku whines.

Inko opened her messages with Izuku on her phone and showed it to him, "I texted you two days ago!"

Huh. Izuku took the phone out of her hands, to look at the message. Oh wait. He's stupid. "The nearby cell phone towers are down for repairs, some villain took them all down overnight."

Inko deeply sighs, "Honestly, all these villains are always causing so much damage!" She sits down at the end of the couch, where there's a little bit of space next to where his feet are resting.

"Wait," Izuku comes to a realization, "If you're home, then is..." He leaves the statement hanging in the air.

Inko smiles, "Hisashi is awake and kicking, earlier than they thought he'd be. He maxed out on the insurance provided for him by the, um, agency he works for and the individual insurance plan only works inside of Asia, so..."

Izuku bites his lip. He feels like he isn't being told the full story, and he could care less about insurance, but...There's a question that's been bouncing around his head for years. It seems like there's no time better than now to ask it, so he does. "Why won't he come home?"

The smile on Inko's face freezes, before melting into a somber sort of expression. "He's...Your dad is...He's always been a free spirit. He climbed to the top of Mount Fuji in his first year of university, the first moment that he could get away from his parents. I don't think there is any way to get him to settle down in a single place and just stay there."

"But we're here!" Izuku exclaims, making a wide gesture with his hands before covering his mouth. He continues, more softly, "Can't he even visit?" He might not feel much for Hisashi, but he's hurt that his father doesn't even consider Izuku worth coming home for. He hasn't seen his father for so long that he can't even remember the last time the three Midoriyas acted like a complete family. When he was four, maybe. His last memory of the guy is of the two of them on the balcony, as he tried to huff and puff and blow some fire out of his lungs. Obviously it didn't work, and Inko ended up stepping out onto the balcony to give his dad an unimpressed look.

Inko hums, getting up from the couch and walking towards a bookshelf in the living room. "I've never really told you about your father, have I?" When she comes back, there's a photo album in her hands. Inko kneels down by Izuku, flipping the photo album and showing him the first few pages. "See, here's us hiking the trail to Machu Picchu, and here's us in Qingqing City in China, you know, where the first quirk appeared. Oh, and here we're backpacking on a beach trail, I'd never been more glad to be on solid ground after that."

He'd say something about her avoiding his question, but Izuku can't really complain. Inko loves those photo albums with all of her heart, but she always looks through them in the privacy of her room. Izuku kind of assumed that they were off-limits to him by the time he was ten. It means a lot, that she's sharing these past moments with him. This is an entire new side of his mom that he's seeing, right now. The adventurous Inko who backpacks on beaches and takes pictures of dead whales and stuff. Even if she doesn't let him see that particular picture.

Honestly, though, he's just glad to have his mother back.

* * *

After the Sports Festival, Izuku has very much come to appreciate the existence of Uraraka Ochako. For a week or two, he had been pretty fucked up over the idea that, contrary to his belief, Kacchan is not in fact invincible. It's strange. "Kacchan does not lose," had practically been a law of nature, an unshatterable reality ( _a survival mechanism_ ) for Izuku in the past twelve years of his life. And then Uraraka just came along, said, "Hey. Fuck that," and then metaphorically—and almost physically—punted his ass into the stratosphere. There was an almost strange sort of glee in watching her match against Kacchan. Watching the fire in her eyes, seeing the moment that Kacchan's eyes became so, so desperate.

To say that Izuku respects Uraraka is a bit of an understatement. He's half-tempted to make fan-made merchandise based on her and post it on his Herobubble. The reason that he doesn't is because he has every intention of meeting her. Stopping himself from doing it is a sorry attempt to dial down his admiration of her before it evolves into full-blown fanaticism. In the past, he'd definitely scared off the very small minority of people who were willing to befriend him by doing that.

Would she even like to be his friend, though? Izuku doesn't really have a lot going for him. Otherwise he'd, y'know, actually _have_ friends. . He'd like to say Kanai randomly texting him at 4 AM about the latest conspiracy theory counts as friendship, but the only other the two of them interact is through awkward waves in the school hallway. But outside of that, it's really just...Daichi, with his mid-jog rants, and Fumiko, with her giant collection of crocheted hero dolls. He read on the internet somewhere that it's kind of sad if you're a teenager who considers grown ass adults your friends but...to be fair, they're good company.

Regardless of all of his lingering doubts, Izuku still gets a chance to at least try at friendship with Uraraka. It's actually a bit of an inevitability. Now that his mom is home, the Urarakas and Midoriyas frequently gather to eat meals together or just hang out. Uraraka would have to come home to meet her parents eventually, wouldn't she? It isn't too far-fetched to think that one of these days, she'd join the four of them for dinner.

They don't meet over dinner, though. Rather, they meet when Uraraka is practicing using a slingshot with zero-gravity ammo. He came out onto the balcony to get a breath of fresh air, not to have a rock narrowly miss head. But hey, that's just life, isn't it?

"Sorry!" A voice calls from the balcony to the right of him. Izuku turns to see exactly one (1) Uraraka Ochako covering her mouth with a very guilty expression on her face, a slingshot held in her other hand. Her hair is tied into a ponytail in a way, face still framed by her long side bangs, and she's wearing a loose pink shirt with black athletic shorts.

Izuku immediately loses any semblance of chill that he had gained standing on the balcony, because _o_ _h my god he is talking to a girl he is talking to Uraraka Ochako oh my god_. "Can I get your autograph?" Izuku yelps, covering his mouth for a moment before he starts barreling ahead in a squeaky voice, "Oh my god, that's a stupid question. I'm sorry, please just ignore everything I said. I'm just going to go inside, bye!"

He's almost through the door when Uraraka's voice stops him. "Wait, don't go!" Izuku slowly turns towards her, pointing at himself as if to say, _Who, me?_ "You're Midoriya, aren't you? Mom and Dad have been talking about your family a lot. I've been wanting to meet you, let's go talk over coffee or something!" Wait, what? Somehow, Izuku manages to stutter out an agreement, and half an hour later, the two of them are dressed properly and walking to a nearby cafe. It's a place called Cafe Futhe. He's never actually been there, mostly because he's never really been _anywhere_ in his three months of living in Mie Prefecture. Not that he has anyone to go to these places with.

He...isn't sure how this works. The best that he manages is awkwardly looking over to Uraraka, who seems to be marching forward with a purpose. Are they supposed to be talking about something, or is he just supposed to follow her? To his relief, it's her that starts the conversation. "So, which school are you going to?" She glances over at him.

"Oh! Umm...Hibiya High School!"

This time, Uraraka whips her head back to look at him, "Hibiya? You must be so smart!"

Izuku waves his hands in front of his face, shaking his head vehemently, "No! I just...got in! Yeah! I mean it's nothing compared to Yuuei!"

Uraraka gives him an incredulous look, "Hibiya. One of the best academic schools in the country. Yuuei's just got the money to wave around."

"Okay, sure," Izuku concedes, "But it's still impressive, considering Yuuei gets tens of thousands of applicants apply every year. I mean, sure I got into Hibiya, but I also applied to Yuuei and di-," He pauses, reconsidering his words. "They're super choosey, so the fact that you even got past the application process is impressive!"

Uraraka scrunches her face, "I guess when you put it like that." To Izuku's relief, she doesn't comment on the part where he mentioned applying to Yuuei. It's still a bit of a sore spot.

When they arrive at the cafe, Izuku realizes that it's an area that he's passed by a lot during his jogs with Daichi. He's never really taken the moment to appreciate the surrounding though. Cafe Futhe is a rather quaint little shop that sits near the top of a hill. It takes a bit of a hike to get there, but Izuku and Uraraka don't work up too much of a sweat trying to get there. At some point on the path there, the cement road turns into a little dirt trail that cuts through grass and trees. At the end of the path sits Cafe Futhe, amongst the grass and weeds. Little tables sit on the front porch, offering a nice place to sit and eat for those who want to appreciate the surrounding.

It's so out of the way that Izuku has to wonder how it gets any business, muttering the thought under his breath. Apparently he said it loudly enough for her to overhear it, because Uraraka laughs, "It really shouldn't. But us locals love it enough to go here regardless. Once it got wrecked in a villain attack when I was five, and everybody pitched in to get it back up and running. Mom and Dad offered to have the company put the building back together again." Izuku glances over at her, seeing the sheer love in her eyes as she gazes towards the building. It feels like he's intruding on a moment between her and the cafe. "I wanted to visit it because I haven't been here since before the school year started, and I figured you'd never visited it. Two birds with one stone, yeah?" She looks straight into his eyes and gives him a blinding smile. For a moment, he's sure that he's looking right into the sun. He can't be blamed for looking away.

He stumbles a bit as Uraraka takes his hand and tugs him inside. The door gives a little chime, as the two of them enter the cozy interior of the cafe. It's small and empty, save for the girl playing on her phone behind the counter. Izuku's eyes are drawn towards a little mounted chalkboard with the most popular items written on it, as Uraraka and the girl at the counter start enthusiastically talking to each other. He's honestly a bit dazed because of all of the new experiences, so it takes him some time to actually read what's on the chalkboard. The two of them are still talking to each other by the time he decides on something to get, so he pulls out his phone to check the latest hero news. Before he can actually get into it, Uraraka turns and talks to him, "Midoriya! This is Asatani Kaori, we're pretty close childhood friends! I guess she started working here."

Asatani waves at him, looking a bit bored, "Heya. She drag you here?" Izuku doesn't know how to respond to that, so he doesn't, "You want a drink or something?"

"I, uh...Sure," he says, and gives her his order. She nods, pulling out two cups and starting to prepare the drinks. Uraraka must have ordered something while he was busy spacing out at the blackboard. It's easy to see what she's doing, because all of the supplies she needs are in a room behind the counter. He doesn't understand what she does, but his attention is focused on the way that milks pours out of the tip of her finger as she makes the drinks. Izuku...doesn't ask about the quirk, because then he wouldn't be able to stop himself from asking where the milk comes from. Izuku has learned the hard way that asking people about quirk-related bodily secretions usually winds up badly for him. His old classrooms suddenly started smelling a lot more when he learned that Kacchan's quirk is basically explosive sweat.

As soon as Asatani asks for the money, he whips out the bills he had crumpled in his palm and blurts, "I'm paying!"

Asatani looks over to Uraraka, who looks ready to protest, a lazy grin slowly stretching over her face. "He wins."

"Kaori!" Uraraka huffs, crossing her arms, but thankfully doesn't protest too much. "Fine. Be like that, but I'm spamming you with you know what later." Asatani's face goes from smug to horrified in a flat second. When Uraraka turns to go outside with her drink held in her hand, Izuku trails after her, bringing the drink and pastry he ordered.

As they sit, Izuku offers her one of the forks that he grabbed from inside. "We can share this!"

"Oh!" Uraraka says, "Are you sure?"

"Yeah, it's a little too big for me to eat," Izuku lies, borrowing one of the tricks his mom uses to make people accept her kindness. It works, and the two of them share the cake as they talk about random things. Comfortable, safe, ice-breaking topics.

Uraraka has a kind of relaxing presence to her. It's impressive, how quickly Izuku settles into conversation with her despite the misgivings he has about...well, a whole lot of things. Talking to her is easy, almost natural.

Perhaps too natural, because he starts accidentally fanboying over her. "Oh my god, you were so impressive in the Sports Festival, you and Shinsou definitely deserved being moved into the heroics course."

She gives him a smile, but doesn't look into his eyes, "Yeah, I'm really glad to be in the heroics course now, but...I don't know if I really deserve it. Everyone's always saying Wonder Duo this, Wonder Duo that, but I couldn't even fight my final match. At least Shinsou actually fought against Todoroki." Uraraka looks down into the empty cup in her hands, squeezing it a bit more tightly.

"But you do!" The words spill out of his mouth rapidly, because by god does he believe that Uraraka deserves it. "You made an advantage for yourself in a situation where you were given nothing to work with. You managed to beat someone who is naturally equipped with a weapon. I think you would have totally destroyed him if it weren't a tournament style battle, maybe in a building sort of setting. Granted, it's hard to say, when there's so many different factors at play in actual battle, as well as the added factor that you're both heroes-in-training." Izuku taps his fingers on the table and bites his lips in an attempt to make his point short, "Anyway, what I'm saying is it's super impressive that you managed what you did without any of the training the hero course kids got. And...that guy has been training his whole life."

Uraraka considers his words for a moment, before replying, "You know him?" Damn it, Izuku was trying to make it seem like he doesn't know Kacchan.

"Oh, no!" Izuku quickly covers up his error, "I just saw someone...interview one of his old friends? Yeah. Should we head back or something?" He says, trying to distract her from his terrible lie. The two of them have been at this cafe for a while now, their drinks having been finished for at least an hour, so it isn't necessarily a concern brought out of nowhere.

Uraraka gets up suddenly, her face a little shocked, "Oh my god, time passed so quickly! Let's head back to the apartment building." The two of them carry the cups and plates inside just to be nice to Asatani, and start walking back.

When he catches the sight of a battle between the Pro Hero Air Jet and a villain with a rock-looking mutation quirk, he does something that he should be ashamed of in the company of someone he's just met for the first time.

"Wait, can we watch this?" Izuku asks Uraraka, tugging at the sleeve of her shirt, anxious to see the fight unfold.

"Sure!" Izuku beams at her, glad that she appears to be okay with waiting a bit longer before getting back to the apartment building.

Browsing The Guard's Archives so frequently has introduced him to a new sort of hobby, one that is perhaps an evolution of his previous interests. Chasing down hero fights is fun and all, but there's only so much he can do with the notes that he takes on the scene and detailed analyses he makes afterwards.

As Izuku gets his phone out, he surveys his surroundings. There aren't too many people near this street, save for the two of them and a mother tugging her child away. He lifts up his phone and presses the record button, deciding that there isn't anyone who's going to call him out for recording this.

Unless, of course, you're Uraraka. "Isn't that illegal?" She whispers, though her face gives no signs that she actually cares about him breaking this particular law.

She's right tho, it is illegal. It's been illegal for some time now. The law was put into place maybe one or two years after the pro hero career went from a highly controversial topic in the new era of quirks to every kid's dream career. It isn't chasing after hero fights that's against the law, because one of the biggest things keeping the hero industry afloat is the lack of appropriate limitations on observing hero fights. After all, less publicity means less cash flow for a pro hero, and the same applies to the entire industry of pro heroics.

What is illegal, though, is recording fights like these without the type of recording license that only news stations get, for a number of reasons. Sure, it's dangerous, but there's more to it than that. News stations and the hero industry work on a bit of a "you scratch our back, and we'll scratch yours" basis. Because of that, it's not hard for the public relations sector of a hero agency to contact news stations and get them to pull any footage they have on a certain fight where...say, a pro hero like Endeavor causes massive property damage. After that, blaming it on the villain or on unavoidable circumstances is a lot easier to do with only witness accounts to go off of. Your ordinary civilian, though? Leave them alone with half a minute of incriminating footage, and suddenly, you've got a scandal on your hands.

Izuku really isn't trying to a be a revolutionary with this, though. He's just become a little less averse to breaking the law after a thread on The Guard's Archives informed him on the rationale for this particular law. If he's already been living on the edge by watching battles like these, he might as well milk it for all its worth.

The battle concludes with an easy victory for Air Jet, after the villain receives an air-propelled kick to the groin. It looks like being rocky isn't enough for the villain to protect his...softer regions. Thankfully, the part of the fight that Izuku and Uraraka got to see was only three minutes long, because his phone is starting to run out of storage.

"What are you going to do with the video?" Izuku almost leaps into the air at that, having forgotten that Uraraka is with him.

Izuku scratches the back of his neck, a bit self-conscious about his hobbies. "When I get home, I'm going to analyze the video to see how Air Jet's support equipment aids him in redirecting his Air Propulsion quirk," He waits for the usual

' _That's weird'_ , or the ' _You really think that'll help you become a hero?'_.

He forgets that Uraraka is not one of his old classmates, that know about his status as a quirkless person, or his old aspirations to be a hero. Instead, he gets, "Aizawa-sensei is always telling us to look at old footage for any techniques that would work for us, but I could never! It's really cool that you can do that without anyone telling you to."

He almost trips on flat concrete because of that comment, but Uraraka grabs his arm and uses her quirk to keep him from falling. It'll take years before Izuku stops reliving the embarrassment of the scene in his head, but he can at least manage to seem like he isn't currently dying of shame. "R-really?"

"Yeah," Uraraka nods with strong conviction, "But wouldn't it be better to use a camcorder if this is something you do often?"

Izuku rectifies his previous statement that Uraraka is merely impressive. She isn't just impressive, she's a goddamn _genius_. With a camcorder, he can not only record hours of footage to look back at and analyze without worrying about storage, but he can also upload high-quality videos to the footage forum of The Guard's Archives. Inko is perhaps a little confused about why Izuku wants a camcorder for his 16th birthday of all things, but she ends up getting him one anyway.

* * *

Two weeks after they meet, Uraraka goes back to Yuuei for their yearly summer training camp.

A few days into the training camp, Shinsou Hitoshi is kidnapped by the League of Villains, and social media goes into an absolute frenzy.

Three days after Shinsou's kidnapping, the paragon of hero society crumbles in front of the world, and Izuku is left feeling so fucking _lost_.

* * *

 **um. i had stuff to say. wow, i'm so used to having so much to say in a/ns that i end up having to pick what to cut out. hmmm let's see. oh yeah. shinsou got kidnapped instead of bakugou. not for any particular narrative reason, that's how shit worked out. guess that's what happens when you change most of the sports festival.**

 **ummm yeah this chapter was delayed by a week because this chapter was kicking me in the ass. i hope it wasn't as boring for you to read as it was for me to write (not to say that it wasn't fun! just. difficult). there...really wasn't much going on in the scenes, but i needed them to establish certain details. uhh the formatting might be fucked up cuz this website is wonky.**

 **thanks to chim_cheeree_choo on ao3 for editing this chapter for me! ilysm**


	7. mistakes

**wow. it's been a long time. sorry. school and such has been in the way, and i sincerely apologize for this chapter taking as long as it did to get to you. fun fact, i had to restart this chapter at least four different times! four completely different beginnings, jesus christ. it was. hard to know how to start this chapter. but thank you SO much for the amount of support i've gotten during those five months of no updates. i'm really going to at least try to update once a month from now on.**

 **from here on out, this story will be seriously diverging from canon, mostly cuz i'm not caught up with bnha. you'll also see that i now have a set number of chapters for this story. this is just an estimate. it might change, and it might change a lot.**

* * *

The fall of All Might shakes hero society to its very core.

When All Might took his role as the Symbol of Peace, it put modern superhuman society in a very precarious position. Crime did decrease in large swathes, but at a cost. Society started to stand on a pillar. A single point of failure. Sure, there were other heroes standing alongside that pillar, but no one hero was as important to the peace of society as All Might. It wasn't Kamui Woods or Cementoss or Best Jeanist that people cried out to save them when there was no hope left. It was All Might. He symbolized hope. Just knowing that All Might was out there was enough to make a person feel safe enough to stroll the streets, in a society where even just traveling to work could mean encountering a dangerous villain.

Heroes don't just save lives. They save hearts. What All Might gave Izuku wasn't safety from villains, it was years of hope for a brighter future. That one lifeline that would always keep him going to the next day. The idea that one day, he too could be there to save people, and make them feel like they were safe no matter what city or situation they lived in.

Izuku is in the living room when it happens. Huddled in a blanket, curled up against his mom as the two of them watch the news with unwavering attention. Right now, he clings to his mother like a child as the figure that carried him through his childhood stands as a skeleton. He can tell he's crying, but his mind hardly processes it. His mind isn't processing anything. This isn't the All Might he saw in interviews, encouraging kids to eat healthy and stay in school. This isn't the All Might in his very own cartoon show. This isn't the All Might he saw on television, beating villains left and right. ( _This certainly isn't the All Might he saw, suffocating in that tunnel._ )

It doesn't matter who this All Might is, though, because this All Might is still All Might. "Beat him, All Might!" he screams with strangled vocal chords. Izuku knows All Might can't hear him, but it needs to be said. It's just him and his mother in the apartment, trying their best to yell hope past their tears, but in that moment, it almost feels like he can feel millions of people crying for the same. He knows he isn't the only one urging All Might on, to take a stand against this villain who brushed off All Might's blows with such ease.

Izuku stands to his feet and punches the air when All Might delivers the final blow, knocking the villain out cold. The camera zooms in on All Might, and Izuku can see the blood smearing his lips. Still, he has to celebrate this win when there's little else to celebrate. All Might transforms into his former self for what will be the last time, and holds his fist in the air in victory. Inko suddenly crushes Izuku in a hug, muttering "Joy Maa Durga, joy," into the crook of his neck. She holds onto him for all she's worth. Izuku naturally melts into her hold. If the two of them miraculously weren't crying before, then they sure were now.

It's not a victory. Izuku knows that. The days after are some of the hardest he's ever gone through. Izuku can't help but feel an aching loss deep inside his bones. It doesn't help that he's constantly surrounded by a reminder of what happened. The muttering of kids in school, news channels fervently debating about what this means for society, articles calling All Might either a fraud or a hero. Wherever he goes, one thing is clear. Society has forever changed.

When Izuku is stressed, he likes to do things that distract him from the source of his stress. This situation doesn't really allow for him to do that, but there are two ways he can escape all of that stress.

The first is his mother. She's the most understanding person he's ever known in his life, and he's so glad that she's there for him. The first time she tries to talk about what happened with him, Izuku starts tearing up on the spot. So from then on, she doesn't talk about it. Instead, she feeds him, sends him off to school with a smile, and never turns on the news channels. There's something strangely comforting about hearing his mom's soap operas echoing down the hall, the words of Bangla peppered through loud, dramatic sound effects. Izuku has never understood the appeal of the genre, but he can kind of see it now. It's nice to focus on fictional drama, instead of other things.

The second is perhaps not the healthiest way to cope with the situation, especially given the changing times, but he doesn't care. It's comforting in its own way. Izuku definitely doesn't hesitate to put the camcorder his mom got him to good use. He's never intentionally gone out of his way to make situations where he'd have to lie to his mother, but there's a strange exhilaration to recording fights between heroes and villains in the dead of night.

Part of it is because of the influence of a particular online forum. If there is one place that Izuku is willing to hear discussion of the effects of All Might's fall from, it's The Guard's Archives. Maybe it's because it's discussion he can directly participate in, but something about it seems so much more convincing. All Might was a deterrent for crime, and a standard for heroes. There's a huge gap between number one hero and the number two hero, on pretty much every front but defeating villains. It wouldn't be surprising to see heroes failing to make up for the hole All Might left. Perhaps lacking a symbol of proper heroism nly means an increase in hero corruption. Izuku might be stupid for listening to the voices of radicals, but he feels a duty to document battles between heroes and villains. To keep an eye on the slip-ups of heroes when most news stations still won't. Somehow, it feels more important in these changing times. Words can be disputed, but recorded footage can't.

So at least twice a week, in the middle of the night, Izuku straps on his camcorder bag, puts on a hoodie, and brings a couple of things for self protection. He can't exactly just go out into the night with nothing to keep him safe, of course. That lesson from his mom at least stuck in his mind, even if every other one didn't. He sticks to recording footage from the roofs, where most villains can't get to him. Admittedly, it's not the safest plan ever, but hell if he has the time to worry about his personal safety.

He never knew what the night life of heroism was like. This kind of stuff isn't broadcasted by mainstream media. The night is the domain of underground heroes and the most dangerous types of villain. It's here on these rooftops that Izuku comes to respect a whole new type of battle, one that he'd never before seen on anything but crappy footage on The Guard's Archives. Heroes like Rampage, Warbleu, Eraserhead, and Dewjelli. Izuku still respects the type of hero All Might once was, of course, but his horizons have broadened.

The battles are brutal. A villain in the daytime often acts to get seen, or is simply committing a petty crime that went too far. A villain in the nighttime stays in the shadows because they know that's where they're the safest. The shadows are where organized crime happens, where villains plan heinous schemes for months, where the screams of victims forever unheard echo into the night. Here, a hero's goal is different. Subdue the villain before their evil spreads to the daylight.

Izuku gets hours and hours of footage over the next months. He knows he's suffering from sleep deprivation, but he can't stop. It doesn't have the same allure of the hero fights he observed so often in high school. Before, the appeal was the hope that eventually, observing hero fights would aid him in his quest to become a hero. Now that he's given up on being a hero, the appeal is that feeling he gets when he thinks about how his footage could be helping to shape a better society. He believes in hero society, of course but...When he's constantly browsing a forum with such different takes on hero society than what he's usually exposed to, it's hard to believe that hero society is fully capable of functioning on its own. It needs people to call out its flaws, whistleblowers. Those who protest, those who speak up, those who change things from within the system.

And hero society is changing. Maybe it isn't because of small fry like Izuku, simply posting videos for others to look at. But it's changing because of large scale protests that march through large cities like Tokyo, Kyoto, and Tokushima. Recent ideologies, like that of Stain, gain traction. Even if a person recognizes him as a coldblooded murderer, it's hard not to agree with his core beliefs. People expect more from heroes, and they know that society needs to change now that there's no All Might to act as a pillar. Izuku sees the public discourse shifting all around him, and he's not sure if its good or bad. For now, though, he focuses on doing what he can, by disseminating information to the people who end up advocating for change.

He's done a good job of keeping out of the way of villain attacks, and he at least doesn't get taken hostage by any villains. Even if he does sometimes accidentally get grazed by their attacks, a burn or a scratch or two is nothing he can't brush off. That's not to say it all goes right, of course. The biggest mistake Izuku makes is during the beginning of his second year of high school.

It's a clear night, with the stars bright in the sky. The moment the minute hand hits four past two, he creeps out of his bed and slings his camcorder bag over his shoulder. He slips out of his night shorts and into pants that will at least protect his knees from scrapes. Next is a simple hoodie, a dark color so that no villain can see him sticking out like a sore thumb on top of the roofs of the city. As much as he'd like to wear his favorite All Might hoodie with its bold and colorful yellows, reds, and blues, he simply can't. Not if he wants his mother to see him alive the next day. So instead, he wears his most casual All Might hoodie. It's a simple dark grey one with maroon sleeves, that just says All Might across his chest. It's about the best thing he has in his closet for night runs like this.

The last two parts to his midnight ensemble are a little unusual, but Izuku has found them to be lifesavers. The strange thing about villains that roam in the night is that they very often have quirks that spread substances over large areas. Spores, vapors, mists, fogs, and gases. The first time it was an issue was when Izuku got irritated eyes for an entire week after a villain's tear gas-like substance got into his eyes. He ignored it, thinking it was a small mishap that probably wouldn't happen again. After all, quirks like that weren't one you would often see villains using in the bright daylight. The second time it was an issue, though, was much more serious. It involved a quirk that beautifully replicated Midnight's Somnambulist quirk, only with a much wider range. Izuku was knocked out for a solid three hours on the top of some stranger's roof before he came back to consciousness. The scramble back to his house was a terrifying one, given that he had to get home before his mother noticed missing. It wasn't a fun time, to say the least, especially knowing that he was left defenseless on a roof for an entire three hours.

So now, Izuku has a respirator and eye protection. He picked up the respirator from a home convenience store, which keeps them in stock for those who don't want to breathe in wood dust while doing woodwork. It's not the best in the market, but a high schooler can only do so much. The mask is a lot less fancier, and not at all intended for what he uses it for. If he's being honest, it's an orange-tinted ski mask he wanted to use for a Hawks cosplay. When Izuku gave up on the cosplay once he got to the wings, it laid in his closet unused for months. In any case, he's glad that he at least found some use for it.

When Izuku finally gets everything he needs, he creeps past his mother's room, the same way he always does. She's a heavy sleeper, and has yet to wake up during any of the times he's slipped away into the nights. As long as he gets leaves past two in the morning, he's in the clear. It means he gets a lot less sleep than he could, but it also means he can completely avoid a conversation he never wants to have.

The rest of the process is a blur. Once he leaves the house, he just wanders the city until he finds a decent fire escape to climb up. Usually, he uses the one on a nice apartment that's just a five minute walk away from his home, but other times, he decides to start from somewhere else. The moment he gets onto the roof, he relies on following the cement beneath him to take him where he needs to go. It was terrifying the first few times, trying to figure out which buildings were safe to hop onto and which weren't. Izuku often came back home with more than his fair share of bumps and scrapes. Now though, he's gotten pretty decent at urban parkour, and he leaps on the roofs like he's been treading them for years.

It doesn't take long for him to find his entertainment for the night.

Most of the battles that Izuku follows involve the underground hero Eraserhead. It's gotten him a reputation on The Guard's Archives for being an Eraserhead fanboy, simply because he most of the footage he posts has the hero in it. He can't necessarily deny the claims, though. There's something infinitely cool about seeing Eraserhead crouched on top of a roof just like Izuku, looking down in the streets for crime to stop. It's almost straight out of a comic book.

Izuku knows that Eraserhead has no intention about being followed by some stupid second year high schooler. But from his vantage point, it's hard not to see Eraserhead, even if he's often several buildings away. The matter of the fact is that Eraserhead standing on roofs to find villains to stop is exactly what makes it easy for Izuku to follow the man, even if he has to be more stealthy than he normally would with other heroes.

The moment that Eraserhead's hair and scarf starts floating in the air is the moment that the hero has spotted crime. Once Eraserhead takes off, Izuku, like many nights before, pursues the man. It's a bit hard following a pro hero who's had way more experience on the roofs than him, and Izuku is barely quick enough to follow the hero. Still, he manages it. When Eraserhead stops and looks down into an alleyway, Izuku finds a good place to settle in. One where neither Eraserhead nor the villain can see him, but he can see them.

It seems that the suspicious activity Eraserhead has spotted involves some sort of individual who is wrapped up in bandages. The person looks kind of like a mummy. Their bandages twirl in the air, randomly cracking at the air every once in a while. It's strangely reminiscent of Eraserhead's own scarves. The mummy person is having a discussion with a blonde man that's backed into a corner. Nothing is inherently wrong with the situation, and no laws seem to be broken, but it's definitely shady enough for Eraserhead to investigate. Izuku pulls out his camcorder, and begins recording.

Eraserhead always hesitates for a few moments before he enters alleyways. If Izuku were to try to guess a reason for why that was, he would have to say that the man was probably trying to evaluate the situation to see if it was more logical to enter the alleyway or to stay far away. This time, the hero makes the wrong decision. The moment that Eraserhead enters the alleyway, the bandages around the mummy person snap to complete attention, becoming sharp fabric that looks like it could pierce. One strand sits at the neck of the blonde man, who has his hands up as he's pressed completely against the wall.

A hostage situation. One of the worst kinds of situations for any hero to handle. For Eraserhead, it's a coin toss. Either the villain threatens the hostage with their own quirk, or they use a weapon that has to be properly disarmed. This time, it seems like Eraserhead is lucky. The bandages are clearly part of the mummy person's quirk, as the bandages fall limp the moment Eraserhead's erasing quirk goes into effect. The blonde man immediately bolts for the exit of the alleyway. It's a situation Izuku has seen at least five times over.

This time it's different, though. The blonde man doesn't just run for his life, getting as far away as he can from the situation. Instead, the man stops at the end of the alleyway, turns around, pulls out a knife, and rushes towards Eraserhead.

It was supposed to be a situation where freeing the hostage meant that Eraserhead would be able to fight more freely. Now, though, it's a two on one situation, and Izuku isn't sure if Eraserhead has even realized it yet.

Izuku doesn't even register his next movements. He doesn't know that his hands have already put down his camcorder, reaching to pick up a brick from the stack of bricks on this rooftop. He doesn't register his noodle arms straining to pull back the brick, and chuck it at the blonde man.

It's the wrong action. What happens next happens quick. Eraserhead's scarf wraps around the blonde man, restraining him while Eraserhead trains his eyes on the mummy person, and sends them flying into the wall, clearly down for the count. Two people neatly constrained in a mere few seconds. Izuku certainly isn't able to follow it, too shocked by what his hands had done.

Izuku broke the rule he's always set for himself when he's out on these roofs. Don't interfere with the pros, because they always know better than he does. The moment the brick goes flying into the blonde man's head is the moment that Eraserhead's goggles flip up, his eyes snapping up to meet Izuku's. Izuku is struck with fear, and almost gets ready to scramble away. Then, he sees the way that Eraserhead's hair floats threateningly, even when the battle has ended. Those glowing red eyes aren't aimed at a villain, they're aimed at him. Even then, it's not the glare that holds Izuku in place so much as the sight of the man he just struck with a brick. It's a red so much worse than Eraserhead's eyes.

Izuku doesn't move. He can't move, his eyes pulled in by the blood smeared on the cement floor. Instead, he waits there on those rooftops as Eraserhead ignores him, focusing on making sure the two villains are completely restrained. When the hero finishes, he quickly makes his way up to the roof where Izuku is, using the fire escape on the side of the wall.

The smart thing to do would be to bolt, considering that Izuku probably just committed a crime. Hell, maybe several crimes, if he considers the camcorder sitting right next to him. He glances down at the camcorder, and then looks down at his hands. If there's one thing he can do to make this better for himself, it's to hide away the camcorder, mask, and respirator, to make his presence on the roof seem less purposeful. So he does that.

When Eraserhead finally gets to the roof where Izuku is, he briefly has a surprised look on his face, as if not expecting the high schooler to remain there. Any surprise is quickly washed away by a blank face. That stare of Eraserhead's is so much scarier up close. Izuku shrinks into himself and looks down on the floor. He bites his lip, and starts to stay something, but Eraserhead cuts him off. "Save it."

"I-I'm sorry," Izuku squeaks out, "It happened without me thinking."

Eraserhead looks down on him with a scornful gaze. "You're just a kid, probably a high schooler," Izuku does nothing to deny it. The hero scoffs, "If you were an adult, I'd have you arrested for acts of vigilantism. If you were one of my students, you'd be expelled quicker than you could say All Might. But you're neither of those things, so here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to assume your guardian never taught you any common sense. This can stay between us, and I can say that the injury to the man was caused by me. But you don't pull this crap again. I see you on these roofs again, and I'm showing no lenience."

Izuku's relieved that Eraserhead isn't punishing him. The last thing his mother needs to hear is that her son was out on the roofs at three in the morning trying to watch a hero fight two villains. But a pit still sinks in his stomach. He doesn't want his actions to be misunderstood. Izuku blurts out, "I wasn't trying to be a vigilante!"

"But you did act as one," Eraserhead then gestures at the alley, likely indicating the blonde man Izuku struck with a brick, "You could have killed him. You're lucky he's even alive. Kid, we have pro heroes for a reason. I had the situation handled, but now I have more paperwork to file. Your actions are not helping to make our jobs any easier." Izuku knows that, he really does, but he can't help what he does without realizing. "If you're going to play hero, then you have two options. Transfer to a hero course, and if you can't do that, then be a civilian, and leave the job to those who are licensed for it."

How does Izuku say that he once wanted to be a hero? That he was stopped before he could even try? Izuku tries to choke out the words, but he isn't able to say it. So instead he looks down at the floor, and utters words he'd never uttered for himself since elementary school. He'd never had to, because someone would always answer for him. _What's your quirk?_ Someone would ask. _He's quirkless,_ someone would answer. Cue laughter.

"I'm quirkless," Izuku says softly. "I can't be a hero." Pause for laughter.

Eraserhead doesn't laugh, though. Instead, he just sighs. "Yeah, there's a reason you aren't a hero. I'm not going to pointlessly bloat your hopes and say that it's possible to be a quirkless hero, but I'm not going to say it's impossible either. Quite frankly, I don't know. But if you've given up already, then you've got zero potential. So I can't say anything that's going to help you."

The words stay in Izuku's head, even after Eraserhead escorts him home.

Even if Eraserhead said his words couldn't help, they do, because the hero is right. Izuku has given up, hasn't he? He knows he can't be a hero, but the advice applies to more than just his old fantasies. Izuku has given up on himself. He's given up on any sort of future. And in the process, he's made himself into a person without any sort of potential.

That night, Eraserhead becomes the new idol of a young teenage boy by helping him regain his spark in life. Yeah, Izuku is going to try to make something useful of himself, even if he won't be able to be a hero he always wanted to be. Some day, he'll help save people in his own way.

* * *

 **sorry if the writing was sloppy. events happened a little quicker than i initially planned them to, but i think this was the best way to get myself writing again. cutting straight to the interesting stuff.**

 **i'll give you a hint for the most significant parallel of the last scene, just because i like it. think about one conversation izuku had on a rooftop in canon, that never took place in this story. granted, aizawa is probably out of character. i don't know how to write him, whoops.**

 **as always, my tumblr is proiida!**


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